WEST PARIS – Selectmen have called for a special town meeting to fill a board vacancy to change the duties and responsibilities of the incoming town manager.
They’re also asking voters to accept a rescue squad truck as a loan from an Oxford man.
The meeting will open at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 12, at the Agnes Gray Elementary School gymnasium.
Voters will fill the remaining term of Harlan Abbott, the selectman who was killed in an airplane crash in September. The term runs to March 2006.
Selectmen also want to add three duties, now performed by two people, to the town manager’s job description.
West Paris voted to change to a town manager form of government at the March town meeting. The intent was for the manager to take on the role of tax collector, treasurer, general assistance administration and road commissioner.
Because of an oversight in the town report, now voters are being asked to change the position of town clerk and bookkeeper from elected to appointed and add those duties to the manager’s responsibilities effective as of the town meeting in 2004.
Selectmen are also asking to straighten out paperwork by changing the road commissioner’s job designation from elected to appointed with town manager assuming those duties effective at the town meeting 2006.
Town Clerk Cheryl Shattenberg said that the town manager search committee inadvertently left out the town clerk duties in the job description when the article was put in the annual report.
Shattenberg will be out of a job when a town manager is chosen. She said the town plans to hire a deputy town clerk, at a lower rate of pay than she receives.
“The committee had thought that because a town manager would receive a substantial wage, the town would not be able to pay town clerk wages,” Shattenberg said. “But somehow, that change did not get put in the town report.”
Road Commissioner Willard Keach will continue his town employment but under a new title.
Selectman Howard Guerney would relinquish his duties as general assistance manager.
The town is conducting interviews now for a town manager.
jsmedley@sunjournal.com
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