LEWISTON – Some tricky political maneuvering sent one city councilor storming angrily from Tuesday’s meeting to take his blood pressure medicine.

Councilor Norm Rousseau left the council chambers in anger over some parliamentary wrangling by Councilor Stavros Mendros and Mayor Larry Gilbert. He returned an hour later.

“I was so mad, my blood pressure was just going up and I had to leave,” he said.

The issue was whether members of a downtown development committee should be registered Lewiston voters.

Councilors created the Downtown Neighborhood Task Force in October to look at housing and economic development alternatives for the city. They said the group should be made up of nine registered Lewiston voters.

Mayor Larry Gilbert appointed nine people to the group last month, but asked councilors to remove the registered voter requirement and allow all Lewiston residents to belong. Councilors voted against that idea early this month.

Gilbert said he had one man in mind when asking for the change, Ismail Ahmed, who works for Catholic Charities. Ahmed is not a naturalized citizen and can’t register to vote, but he is working on it.

“He is a very involved person, dedicated to serving the community,” Gilbert said. “And since so many Somalis live downtown and will be affected by this group, I thought they should be represented on the board.”

Councilor Renee Bernier said she objected to some of Gilbert’s other appointments.

“My issue is how long the people have lived in the community, how dedicated they are,” she said.

Counting votes

Bernier, Rousseau and Councilor Lillian O’Brien didn’t want to change the registered voter requirement. Councilors Mendros, Ron Jean and Paul Samson favored opening the board to all Lewiston residents. With Councilor Mark Paradis not attending Tuesday’s meeting, that left the vote tied – with Gilbert poised to cast the deciding vote in favor of allowing non-voters on the board.

Mendros moved to reconsider the council’s vote on registration from the previous meeting, with both Bernier and O’Brien voting against it and Samson, Jean and himself voting for it. Rousseau abstained from voting, making it a 3-2 vote. According to the charter, councilors need a four-vote majority to pass anything, so the matter would have failed.

But Mendros wasn’t finished. He declared Rousseau’s abstention as a de facto no vote.

“Since it was not a vote in the positive, it had to be a vote in the negative,” he said.

Clerk Kathy Montejo said the charter was silent on abstaining. That meant that Gilbert could rule any way he wanted to, Mendros said. Gilbert did, first ruling Rousseau’s abstention a no vote, then ruling the council’s vote a tie and finally casting the deciding vote to bring the matter before councilors.

“If you vote on it again, you’ll have to do it with me out of the room,” Rousseau said as he stormed out.

Councilors did vote again, but the matter failed. Without Rousseau present to abstain, the issue never got more than three positive votes – one short of the charter-mandated majority.