LIVERMORE FALLS – Selectwoman Doreen Maheaux has resigned.

Town Manager Alan Gove said Monday that he received Maheux’s resignation Friday. She cited personal problems as the reason she was giving up the position she was elected to in February 2003. She has been absent from regular meetings the past month or so.

Because it is so difficult to get all five members at a meeting, due to work and family schedules, the board agreed at the close of Monday’s meeting to take the fast track option to fill the position.

It may be a few days before papers are ready, Gove explained, because Town Clerk Kristal Flagg will be occupied with the election and town meeting.

Once the papers are ready, it should take about 45 days to elect a new selectman, he estimated.

That position will be for the remainder of Maheux’s term, which ends June 30, 2005.

In other business, the board met at length with Chief Deputy Guy Desjardins and Capt. Ray LaFrance of the Androscoggin County Sheriff’s Office along with local Police Chief Ernest Steward Jr.

They discussed the possibility of the Sheriff’s Office serving as backup for the town department, which is facing the loss of another patrolman.

“If we knew they needed help, we’d be there,” Desjardins said. He and LaFrance both stressed that they would respond only as backup, that local officers would handle the complaint and its paperwork.

“If we handle the complaint, we lose continuity of what’s going on,” LaFrance explained. “We have no clue what’s going on in Livermore Falls, we’re not here very often.”

“We’re trying to strike a balance between budget constraints and the needs of the public,” Gove told the men, who explained their coverage of the area and their cooperation with state police.

“We couldn’t survive without it (state police arrangement),” Desjardins said. LaFrance said his department gets very few calls from Livermore Falls. “You have a good department. I hate to see a police department lose personnel, you lose the training and the experience that you never get back.”

Discussion closed with mutual concerns of what would happen to their departments as well as the rest of county and local government if the Palesky proposal passes.

“It’s unrealistic, we’d have no employees,” Gove said.

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