WEST PARIS – Officials with Tri-Town Rescue Service say an e-mail sent to town officials and newspapers purporting to reveal problems between employees and the Board of Directors is entirely false.

The message was sent early Monday morning from a Yahoo account in the name of Kevin Davis, an emergency medical technician with Tri-Town. Davis denied sending it and has filed a complaint.

The Oxford County Sheriff’s Office said Deputy William Nelson is investigating the matter.

The message went to town officials in West Paris, Greenwood and Sumner, which Tri-Town serves, as well as the Sun Journal, Advertiser-Democrat and Bethel Citizen newspapers.

The author of the e-mail said directors cut the service’s pay by $1 per hour, asked employees to work some shifts for free, wrongly fired an accountant and ceased informing employees when they would be meeting. The e-mail also said the service’s director, Allison Ross, began working at Bethel Rescue without leaving adequate coverage at Tri-Town and approached Med-Care Ambulance with the board to try to have that service purchase Tri-Town.

“My boss called me, the chief of Tri-Town, and asked if I’d written it,” Davis said Wednesday. “I was pretty surprised to see it, because I hadn’t written it.”

“It’s all a bunch of lies,” he said, “the whole thing.”

Davis said a person who did financial work for the organization was laid off recently, but he did not know the reason.

Ross said that decision was made by the Board of Directors. She said Tri-Town is not involved in talks with Med-Care. She said the service has discussed some ideas on what Tri-Town might do after Woodstock voters opted to switch to PACE ambulance service, but nothing has been implemented.

She said she has done work with Bethel Rescue since 2005, and that her husband is on shift as a medic with Tri-Town when she does so.

“What we’re trying to do is track where the e-mail came from,” Ross said. “It’s very slanderous, and Kevin’s name was forged (in) that e-mail.”

Ross said she believes someone has been spreading misinformation about the service for the past six months, and that the e-mail was the first overt action.

“It’s truly an attempt to make us look bad,” she said.

Last summer, several Tri-Town employees accused the Board of Directors of not being transparent in their actions. The complaints followed the firing of Norm St. Pierre as chief of the service.

According to paperwork presented by St. Pierre, he was fired for failure to conduct proper background checks when hiring Davis.

A former employee with the Norway Highway Department, Davis was placed on a two-week paid administrative leave after it was learned that he kept a .45-caliber semiautomatic handgun in his locked car outside the department.

Davis said at the time that he kept the gun in his vehicle to keep it out of his residence, where there were small children. He had been issued a permit to carry a concealed weapon, but selectmen passed an ordinance prohibiting town employees from carrying weapons on town property soon after Davis was found to be keeping the weapon in his car.

Davis said the relationship between employees and the board has improved since the board was reorganized. He said meetings are posted at the Tri-Town building and employees are invited to attend and share their input.

“It’s improved, like, 200 percent,” he said.

“They’re completely resolved,” Ross said of last year’s problems. “The current state of things is Tri-Town is running very well.”

Town Manager Kim Sparks of Greenwood said Ross called her the day after the e-mail was sent to ask for a copy, saying she did not think Davis had sent it. She said Davis called Wednesday morning to apologize for any confusion the e-mail may have created.

“He was just beside himself,” Sparks said. “He said he was set up.”

Tri-Town is based in West Paris and serves that town, along with Greenwood, Sumner, and Milton Plantation. At the annual town meeting in Woodstock this year, residents voted 61-25 to change their rescue coverage from Tri-Town to PACE Ambulance.