PARIS — By wide margins, voters decided Monday to remove Chairman David Ivey from the Board of Selectmen and keep Lloyd “Skip” Herrick.

A total of 444 ballots were cast at the polls, with an additional 276 absentee ballots submitted to the town before the election. The final tally in favor of removing Ivey stood at 651, with 69 against.

Ivey was unavailable for comment Monday evening.

For Herrick, 600 ballots were cast against his recall, while 116 were for it.

“I’m very pleased with what the outcome is,” Herrick said when told of the results. “I think the people that realize that I wanted to and needed to stay there exercised their judgment to keep me there.”

Herrick, who was elected to the board in 2008, said the vote on Ivey’s recall represented the democratic wish of the town’s residents.

“I guess I’m not necessarily surprised at the outcome. It is what it is, and the people have spoken,” he said. “So we’ll move on to Feb. 5, and hopefully Ray Glover will prevail and we’ll hopefully get moving forward and doing the people’s business.”

Selectman Raymond Glover is also subject to a recall vote on Feb. 5. That vote will also determine if voters will recall Troy Ripley, a selectman who submitted his resignation at the board’s last meeting. Ripley’s name will still appear on the ballot because it had been printed before the resignation was submitted.

About 10 residents waited at the polls at the fire station while the ballots were counted, a process which took about an hour. Neither Ivey nor Herrick attended the reading of the results.

Ivey was elected to the board in the 2007, and spent his first year as vice chairman. He was chosen chairman in June 2009, at the same meeting in which he sided with the 3-2 majority to terminate former Town Manager Sharon Jackson’s contract with the town without cause.

The number of residents attending the selectmen’s meetings increased following the decision, with several attendees frequently criticizing Ivey’s actions on the board.

Jackson has also filed an appeal of her termination in the Oxford County Superior Court. The charges in the lawsuit include the accusation that Ivey, Ripley and Selectman Glen Young held illegal meetings prior to the vote to agree on the decision.

Ivey has denied that any such meetings took place. He has also said that Jackson’s contract was legally severed, as it allowed the board to terminate it without cause.

Ivey protested Friday that he was denied a public hearing, which a selectman can call “at any time between the time of ordering the recall election and the date of said election” according to the recall ordinance passed in November. The ordinance also says that such a hearing must take place at least seven days before the election with an additional seven days of public notice.

Town Manager Philip Tarr said Ivey would have been able to request a public hearing before Friday, and that there was not adequate time or enough board members to call the hearing at that time.

The recall and Ripley’s resignation leave the board with Herrick, Glover and Young, who is currently vacationing and will not be available for selectmen’s meetings in February.

Tarr said at the board’s last meeting that there are contingency plans in place if the board needs to operate with fewer members than its quorum of three. These include the ability of a minority board to call elections to fill vacancies and the possibility of a Superior Court judge granting Tarr the power to sign warrants passed by a minority board.

mlangeveld@sunjournal.com

Ballot clerks Rebecca Armstrong and Carol Gould sift through the ballots cast at Monday’s recall election in Paris.

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