WOODSTOCK — The Board of Selectmen agreed Tuesday evening to check whether a selectman must live in town year-round.

“No, I wouldn’t think so,” Chairman Victor Young said. “I think he’d have to live here for at least six months of the year.”

Selectman Stephen Bies raised the question, because in the “next couple of years, I’m not going to live in town during the winter.  

“My thought is, I’d very much like to rent a place in Bryant Pond, but I know there’s not that many options here,” he said. “I’m thinking that for a few months a year, I might end up living in Bethel or Rumford. I don’t know where yet. I would fully intend, of course, to be at all meetings, but I probably wouldn’t be a 12-month resident of the town.”

Selectman Ron Deegan said the board should ask Town Manager Vern Maxfield to check state law.

Young later told Bies, “I would assume that if you received your mail in Bryant Pond and kept that as your place of voting, you would still be a legal resident, even if you rented a place out of town for three, four or five months in a year.”

“Yeah, but I’m pretty sure there’s a limit at a certain point,” Deegan replied.

“I think it might be six or seven months,” Young said.

Bies told Deegan, Young and Maxfield that he was just “trying to gather some information” and would “definitely be around for this winter.”

In other business, Maxfield told selectmen the town was bequeathed $5,000 from the estate of Evelyn T. Bean and it would go to the Whitman Memorial Library.

mdaigle@sunjournal.com

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