CARRABASSETT VALLEY – Selectmen are expected to approve the appointment of a police chief when they meet Monday.

“The board will formalize Scott Nichols’ appointment as police chief at their Monday meeting and will vote to authorize the town manager to sign an employment contract,” Town Manager Dave Cota said Wednesday. The board is scheduled to meet at 4:30 p.m. at the town office.

Nichols, a state trooper from New Sharon, accepted the position, but the board needs to formally appoint him, Cota said.

“I’m really honored and excited to be chosen out of at least 30 applicants,” Nichols said Wednesday. “It’s time to start a new career. I’m looking forward to something completely different.”

The board has been interviewing candidates to fill the position left vacant by the retirement of former Chief Ron Moody.

Moody was hired as the first and only member of the Carrabassett Valley Police Department when it formed in 1988. Now the department has five officers and four full-time dispatch personnel.

Nichols’ first patrol as a state trooper was in the Kingfield area in 1984, and the zone included Carrabassett Valley and work in the mountain and village area prior to the formation of the town’s Police Department.

Nichols and his wife, Lorna, executive director of the Franklin County Chamber of Commerce, are looking for a home in the Kingfield area, he said.

A Farmington native, Nichols, 46, graduated from Mt. Blue High School in 1979 and served three years in the Army before starting as a trooper. He served with Troop C of the state police from 1984 to 1994 before becoming a detective in the homicide unit based out of Augusta, where he served until his retirement in 2004.

During his 20 years with the state police, he also served on the state tactical team, he said, and as a supervisor for the law enforcement program at the police academy in Vassalboro for 18 months.

After retiring in 2004, he spent a year in Iraq working in the area of Taji, north of Baghdad.

After returning to Maine, he went back to Troop C of the state police covering Franklin County.

Once the appointment is finalized, Nichols expects to begin work in Carrabassett Valley on March 10, he said.