Gorham

FOSTER — Maybe years from now, Rhode Islanders will recall an unairconditioned fire house in a quiet rural town where a couple of dozen average citizens gathered on a humid summer evening to talk about new ways of organizing local government.

A group of residents from at least four different towns met at the South Foster Fire Station last night to determine what it would take to combine Exeter, Foster, Glocester, Scituate, West Greenwich and western Coventry into one town called Westconnaug.

Rep. Nicholas Gorham, R-Coventry, whose ideas sparked the meeting, brought copies of each budget from those towns.

The group decided it would focus on three big-ticket items for municipal governments: police, public schools, and public works. It created subcommittees to look into each item.

The plan is to build a municipal budget for Westconnaug and present it to residents next year, around the time that the six towns normally begin preparing their budgets. The Westconnaug working group will meet again at the end of next month, possibly on Aug. 21 in West Greenwich.

Westconnaug comes from a historic Indian name for the region (it’s also a reservoir in Foster), and during the legislative session that ended last month, Gorham proposed a bill creating it.

The bill never made it out of a House of Representative committee, but Gorham has not given up on the idea. He hopes the group that met last night gives the idea the “flesh and bone” it so sorely lacked as a standalone bill.

It means a plan with real numbers showing how much Westconnaug could save taxpayers, what services would be combined, which would remain the same, what towns would be included, which would not.

Some at the meeting last night were well acquainted with the workings of local bureaucracy. Walter May was a former public works director in Foster. Ronald Bachman is a member of the Glocester Budget Board. David Laplante is a retired captain of the Glocester Police Department. Mary Ellen Carlu is a former member of the Coventry School Committee. But the overwhelming majority were novices.

A big question they will face is whether combining the towns into one town is the right path at all, said group members. The strongest opposition has been from residents unwilling to part with their town’s namesake, and the town councils who fear loss of local governance.

Members batted around the possibility that the group’s focus may simply be consolidation of municipal services, of finding cheaper ways to pave roads, police towns and educate children than possible under the current system. Issues like zoning laws and town hall functions may not, after consideration, be right for merging, members said.

Then there is the question of splitting Coventry, which Gorham’s bill proposed. His argument was that the two sides of town –– the comparatively developed eastern side and the rural, sparsely populated western end –– were so divergent that it only made sense to separate them.

Some asked how things like town debt would be addressed. Towns like Coventry and Glocester have large debts, while others, like Scituate, are debt free.

They debated putting the question of creating Westconnaug out to voters, in the form of a nonbinding referendum on the November ballot. They decided the budget was the focus.

“No town council is going to push for this initiative unless there are political consequences,” said Gorham. “We need to show that this is a viable plan that needs to be considered.”

pmarcelo@projo.com