NORTH YARMOUTH — Residents Brian Sites, Austin Harrell and Al Ahlers are vying to fill two open Select Board seats in July 14’s election.

Steve Morrison, the board’s vice chairman, and fellow board member Jennifer Speirs are not seeking re-election to the three-year seats. Meanwhile, Steve Berry and Paul Hodgetts are running to fill the one year remaining in the term of Bill Whitten, the board chairman who resigned March 30; those candidates will be profiled at a later date in The Forecaster.

Mike Simmons is unopposed for another three-year term representing North Yarmouth on the School Administrative District 51 Board of Directors. Nicholas Thibeault is unopposed for a five-year seat on the Cemetery Commission, and no one submitted nomination papers for two, three-year seats on the Budget Committee.

The Select Board candidates weighed in about whether SAD 51 needs a new primary school, and whether it should be in North Yarmouth, along with something they’d like to improve within the town. The district has eyed land for a school in North Yarmouth next to the new Wescustogo Hall & Community Center, part of which used to be the North Yarmouth Memorial School. As student enrollment ebbed at the time, SAD 51 closed that school in 2014, three years after shuttering Drowne Road School.

A jump in enrollment in recent years – the Mabel I. Wilson elementary school has exceeded its 600-student capacity by about 100 – and new projections that show continued growth have caused the district to consider building a new school. The facility could be 100,000 square feet and cost $36.4 million, according to preliminary estimates.

Al Ahlers

Ahlers said he is concerned that “a few years ago we didn’t need a school, and now all of a sudden we do,” adding he would like to see it built in North Yarmouth.

Still, it needs to be erected “in a place that makes sense,” said Ahlers, expressing reticence for a location near Wescustogo. “The school may overwhelm the community center, and that would not be a good thing. There’s a lot of discussion that needs to happen before anything really is settled on that issue.”

On improving his town Ahlers said, “I think we need to be kinder to each other,” expressing a desire for Select Board members to work better together.

“And we need to take care of ourselves,” he added, citing the work of the Living Well in North Yarmouth Committee, which has “done a really good job in trying to get people together, and involved in a number of activities, especially associated with the new community center.”

Austin Harrell

Harrell, who ran for a vacant Select Board seat in March and lost 765-718, to Paul Napolitano, noted that “the need has been identified” for another school. “So I’m in favor of a new school, (since) the projections are showing that we need to have more space, and I think that we need to do that.”

In terms of location, “whatever best fits the community … ” Harrell said. “… I can’t say that I am in favor or opposed to any certain location,” nor whether the school is sited in one town or the other.

Having tuned into some Select Board meetings, he said, “communication seems to be a recurring theme. Communication from the citizens to the board, and I think everybody just wants to be heard.”

“Maybe we can improve on that … and just be transparent with everything that’s going on,” Harrell said.

Brian Sites

Sites said he would like to see “a bit more coordination between the two towns that encompass MSAD 51, and the school system itself” regarding the communities’ growth and development. Growth is important in expanding a town’s tax base, but development comes at a cost in bringing more students into the system and raising school operational costs, he said.

“It feels a lot of times like we run into a situation where we need more space, and the question is, didn’t we just do a study a couple years ago that said we were having declining enrollment, but in the meantime we’ve put up X number of houses,” Sites said in calling for more effective communication and coordination between the towns and school district.

He is on the fence about whether a school should be built. If one is, Sites prefers it be in North Yarmouth, which “is good for the town,” so that it will have a school once again.

Sites said he would like to see greater connectivity among North Yarmouth’s trail systems, and improve pedestrian and bicycle access throughout town. He has seen more people walking and biking as a result of the state-mandated stay-at-home orders triggered by the coronavirus pandemic, “and the traffic is still fairly high, even with the lockdown,” Sites said. “And I would just like to see it safer and more user-friendly.”

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