ROXBURY – Annual town meeting voters on Monday, March 5, get to decide whether or not to go with new, inexperienced blood for town clerk and a selectman, or stick with incumbents for another few years.

Candidates are incumbent Christine “Tina” Howard and Renee Hodsdon for town clerk, and incumbent Selectman Douten “Dan” Thomas and newcomer Debbie DeRoche.

It’s also the first time in a decade or longer that the race for town clerk/tax collector/treasurer/registrar of voters is contested, Howard said Thursday afternoon at the town office.

Howard, 49, said Kay Knapp always ran unopposed for town clerk and served 15 or more years before suffering a stroke and retiring due to age and health. Then Delia Knapp, a relative by marriage, was elected town clerk and held the office for five years, running against someone else to win the position.

Howard said it was Delia Knapp who talked her into running for town clerk in March 2005 after Howard’s third straight three-year term as a selectman expired.

“My saving grace for this job is that I served on the board for nine years,” she said.

She also worked for Sunday River Ski Resort and American Skiing Co. from 1987 through 2002 in real estate, finance and condominium management, and will graduate in May from the University of Maine at Augusta through its Mexico campus with a bachelor’s degree in mental health and human service.

Howard said she’s seeking re-election to continue maintaining the status quo and keeping budgets from being needlessly inflated.

“I’m very, very passionate about my town, and I’m very concerned about the direction the town is headed in,” the lifelong Roxbury resident said. “I’m running because I feel I have the experience that will be really beneficial to the town, and I like helping people.”

Renee Hodsdon, 32, and her husband, Mexico police Sgt. Roy Hodsdon, built a house in Roxbury and moved in last May from Rumford. Like Howard and her husband, Dick, they have no children.

While Renee Hodsdon lacks municipal experience, she has managed her dad, Roland Patenaude’s garage and towing business in Mexico, for the past four years. She is a 1993 graduate of Mountain Valley High School in Rumford and took business classes there.

“I’m hoping the town will give me a chance, as they do most people,” she said Thursday afternoon in Mexico. “I do enjoy business and bookkeeping and business opportunities, and I know a lot of people from Roxbury, and they all think I’d do a good job.”

She said she also wants to be involved in the town in which she lives.

Thomas could not be contacted Thursday.

Like Renee Hodsdon, DeRoche is a newcomer to Roxbury. An event planner with her own business, Occasions Unlimited, on Route 17, and a longtime lab technician at NewPage Inc. in Rumford, DeRoche, 49, said she moved to Roxbury in 1993 from West Peru.

“I’m just a country girl with no municipal experience,” she said late Thursday evening by phone from home. “But I have lots of good ideas. My main concern is getting the town hall dilemma solved. We need to get that done for a new home for the fire department and town hall.”

Roxbury has been dumping thousands into building a new town hall-fire station complex.

DeRoche said she also wants to keep taxes at a minimum and keep the town the way it is.

“I love this town. I wouldn’t have moved here if I didn’t,” she said.

She and husband Dan Lowell have three grown children and four grandchildren.