STRONG – It was with great regret, said Perry Ellsworth, that he resigned Tuesday night as a selectman for Strong.

He cited his new duties as Rangeley town manager as his reason for leaving. They would “not allow me the time it takes to be effective in both municipalities,” he wrote in his resignation letter.

“It was actually quite emotional,” he said in an interview Wednesday.

Ellsworth has served as a selectman since 1996, chairing the board from 1999 until earlier this year.

In Strong he has served as highway supervisor, a budget committee member, and as a director on the SAD 58 school board. He was also on the Franklin County Budget Committee, and was a member of the Franklin County Municipal Officers Association. He plans to continue his work with LifeStar Ambulance Advisory Committee, he said in the letter.

Fellow Selectman Jeff Murphy said that the board “will miss him for sure.” Murphy has served on the board for almost nine years, and said he considers Ellsworth a real diplomat.

“He’s good with everyone around him,” he said. “He carries himself well and represents the people and himself well.”

Murphy said Ellsworth brought the town into the 21st century, computerizing the assessor’s office, where paperwork previously had been done entirely by hand.

Ellsworth is proud to have been involved in the planning and coordinating of the town’s bicentennial celebration in 2001.

“Reliving Strong’s history and looking at Strong’s future was a very enjoyable time for me,” he said.

“Strong has the best possible employees,” wrote Ellsworth in his letter, “and I thank them for their support throughout the good and sometimes challenging times that we have experienced in the past years. Their dedication to the community is a symbol of the greatness that Strong is all about.”

And Strong has certainly seen challenging times.

Ellsworth said his greatest hardship as selectman was when the town lost Forster, a wood-products manufacturing plant, in 2003.

“Good people who had worked there for 40 years lost jobs,” he said.

With the loss of Forster and other manufacturers, the town also lost a significant part of its tax base.

“But the people of Strong are very resilient,” he said. “We’re not going to let this get us down. There’s a unique sense of becoming united in hard times,” he said.

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