BELFAST - Voters in the city and four surrounding towns picked slate of fresh faces to lead their new school district, RSU 71. In elections held Jan. 13, newcomers prevailed over current and past school board members in every contest where voters had a choice.

The new nine-member board will be composed of five directors from Belfast and one each from Belmont, Morrill, Searsmont and Swanville. Seven of those chosen on Tuesday have not previously served on area school boards.

The exception came from Belfast, where candidates ran speciically for terms of one-, two-, or three-years. Those seeking two-year terms were all current RSU 20 board members.

Belfast results

City voters picked five directors from a field of nine candidates split across three separate races. In the three-way race for the a one-year seat representing the city, Ben Potter won by an overwhelming margin over fellow newcomer Tim Wilson and veteran school board member and current RSU 20 director Alan Wood.

Potter - 211
Wilson - 73
Wood - 45

A pair of two-year terms went to RSU 20 board members Caitlin Hills and Charles Grey, who beat fellow director Wayne Corey. The race featured the largest number of blank ballots with 55. There were 19 blanks in the one-year race and 49 in the three-year race.

Corey - 98 
Grey - 265
Hills - 269

Newcomers David Crabiel and Allison Goscinski took a pair of three-year seats easily over current RSU 20 board member Christopher Hyk.

Crabiel - 294
Goscinski - 217
Hyk - 129
 

Belmont

An empty official ballot here shaped up to a contested race thanks to two candidates who approached the town after the nomination deadline. Fifteen votes were cast in the election, which as of late last week had only one write-in canidate. That was Laura Newsom, a write-in candidate recruited by town officials after the deadline. Robert Currier joined the race last Friday but came up short of Newsome by five votes, which was also the number of votes he got and a third of the total number cast.

Laura Newsom - 10
Robert Currier -5
 

Morrill

Voters here picked Bernadette Dutra over fellow first-time candidate Molly Feeney and veteran director Jean Dube. The Morrill vote, more than any, may have been a referendum on old versus new. Dube, who was chairwoman of the SAD 34 and RSU 20 boards from 2006 to 2012, was the most seasoned candidate across the five towns. In her bid to return, she received fewer votes than either of her newcomer opponents.

Dube - 29
Dutra - 38
Molly Feeney - 33
 

Searsmont

Evelyn deFrees defeated write-in candidate Jeffrey Austin by a wide margin. The 65 ballots cast included one write-in for former SAD 34 superintendent Carol Robbins.

deFrees - 58
Austin - 6 
 

Swanville

The town had one official candidate on the ballot, Fredric Black, and no declared write-ins as of last week, Penbaypilot.com was not immediately able to confirm results with town officials.
 

What happens next?

The new RSU 71 board will meet hold an “organization meeting” on Jan. 20 in the Troy Howard Middle School library at 7 p.m., according to new district’s Interim Secretary Larry Theye.

After the November referendum on withdrawal and reformation, Theye was charged with organizing the election school board and generally being the point person for the nascent district. Speaking on Wednesday, he anticipated his duties ending at the upcoming organizational meeting, though he acknowledged that some of the procedural details were still a little gray.

“I’m not sure who’s going to call the meeting to order,” he said, laughing. “Probably me or [Belfast attorney] Kristin Collins.”

Theye said the main item of business at that meeting will be to elect officers to the new board. They will also have to figure out where they will be meeting in the future, he said.

In the bigger picture, the school board will have the authority to hire an interim superintendent. Past conversations with those involved in the withdrawal and reformation process suggest that among the board’s top priorities.

Ethan Andrews can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com