FOSTER — State Rep. Nicholas Gorham (R-Coventry, Foster, Glocester) is hosting a meeting tonight at the South Foster Fire Department to discuss Westconnaug, his proposed “super town” combining five and a half communities in the rural western part of state.

Gorham proposed a bill in February creating a single town out of Exeter, Foster, Glocester, Scituate, West Greenwich, and the western end of Coventry.

The bill calls for the merging of those towns’ school districts, police departments, and other municipal functions. The new town would have a population of about 42,000 persons, or slightly less than that of the city of Woonsocket but larger than that of Cumberland or North Providence.

The House Committee on Municipal Government held the bill for further study in March, but Gorham says he intends to file another version of the bill in the next legislative session. His goal in the coming months is to improve upon it based on suggestions from the public as well as to provide greater detail into its potential cost savings.

“I put forward legislation that I felt was fairly complete, but I’m not married to it,” he said. “I want to keep the discussion and dialogue going.”

Gorham hosted an informal meeting at the Greene Public Library in Coventry last month in which about 70 people attended, he says. From that he was able to gather a group of ten individuals who are dedicated to the idea of a consolidated town, but he is still looking for representatives from the other towns to round out the group, he said.

Currently on the working group are John Humble, of Greene; Mary E. Carlu, of Greene; Gail Mitchell-Slezak, of Greene; Diane Capwell, of Greene; Ed Wethey, of Coventry; Robert Guastini, of Greene; Pat Izbicki, of Greene; Ronald Bachman, of Glocester; Walter May, of Foster, and Robert Boyden, of Foster.

Gorham expects that the working group will meet regularly to put “flesh and bone” on Westconnaug. Much of the initial criticism to the plan, he acknowledges, is that he lacked data on the potential savings of consolidation and that his bill came to the General Assembly without prior consultation with local governing bodies, many of whom rejected his requests for a meeting.

“I was told it would be more beneficial if we showed where [the new town] would streamline and improve [municipal] services,” he said.

With input from the public and town officials, Gorham hopes that the working group will develop a “model budget” of how much Westconnaug would cost to run. “We have to sit down with a pencil and a pen and come up with the details,” Gorham says.

If created, Westconnaug would pull together a large swath of a rural area within the Pawcatuck borderlands, what Gorham says is the largest stretch of undeveloped forest between Washington, D.C., and Boston. It would cut Coventry in half, taking in the area served by the Western Coventry Fire District.

The bill has received lukewarm support from the town councils, many of whom fear a loss of local governance. Gorham says that a unified town would be able to maintain the rural characteristics of those towns while allowing them to take advantage of “economies of scale” that would make doing so easier and cheaper.

Since the bill’s introduction, Gorham has requested to meet with town councils, but so far, only one, Glocester, has taken up the request. West Greenwich has said it will not support his proposal.

Gorham recently spoke before the Foster-Glocester Regional School Committee and will present his plan to the Glocester Town Council at its meeting later this month.

The icy response from local governing bodies hasn’t deterred Gorham, who is up for reelection in November and has a Democratic opponent, Scott M. Pollard, of Foster, whose campaign platform includes criticism of Gorham’s Westconnaug.

“If you want people to take notice of something,” says Gorham, “You have to take action and show that it is entirely possible to do it.”

The Westconnaug meeting begins at 7 p.m. The South Foster Fire Department is located at 5 Mt. Hygeia Rd.

pmarcelo@projo.com