PARIS — Following nearly an hour behind closed doors, selectmen voted 4-1 Friday night to set recall elections in February for four members of the five-member Board of Selectmen.

The first, on Feb. 1, will be for Chairman David Ivey and Lloyd “Skip” Herrick; the second, on Feb. 5, for Vice Chairman Troy Ripley and Raymond Glover.

Glover voted against the decision, saying after the meeting that he believed only one election should be held.

The surprise meeting was called Wednesday by Ivey and posted the following morning, Town Clerk Anne Pastore said.

Ivey said Friday morning that he decided to call the executive session meeting to talk about the recall.

“It was posted, as it should have been,” he said. “It was my call.”

Town attorney Geoffrey Hole, who was at the 5 p.m. meeting, said it met the closed-meeting criteria under the Maine Freedom of Access Law.

Ivey and Ripley were the subjects of a recall petition presented Nov. 22, but the board, which includes Glen Young, failed to set a date for the recall election as mandated under the town’s recently enacted recall ordinance.

Voters then used a state law that allows a notary public to call a town meeting on a petition signed by at least 10 percent of the number of people who voted in the last gubernatorial election, if they feel selectmen “unreasonably refuse to call a town meeting.”

That warrant was submitted to the town clerk Thursday.

About a half-dozen residents attended Friday night’s meeting.

“They should just go ahead and see what happens,” said resident Peter Kilgore, who said he would prefer one election to cut down on costs to the taxpayer. “The people want this over. Just do it, and get it over with and move on.”

Ivey said Friday morning that the board is moving forward on selecting a new town manager to replace Sharon Jackson, whose contract was terminated by the board last summer.

Ivey said no vote had been taken but the board has reached a “general consensus” on who they would like to offer the job. The person is a man who lives out of town, Ivey said.

He said selectmen received about 25 applications for the town manager position, and five or six of those were out-of-state applicants, including one from Arizona.

Ivey would not comment on the pay range, but he did say that the previous town manager was paid “way too much,” and lacked the experience to warrant her $62,000 to $63,000 salary.

The board plans to vote on hiring the unnamed applicant at its next meeting in January.

ldixon@sunjournal.com