Richard Deans’ long career as a Hebron selectman will come to an end Saturday at the annual Town Meeting when his term expires. He was first elected in March 1986. Daryn Slover/Sun Journal

HEBRON — A group of residents approached Richard Deans in 1986 and urged him to run for selectman.

“‘You would make a good selectman,'” Deans recalls them telling him in their pitch, “‘you will make a good one. Just try it.'”

They were right.

Deans reluctantly accepted their challenge, won election and has remained a town leader for the past 36 years, the last 30 as board chairman.

His long career as selectman will come to a close Saturday at the annual Town Meeting when his 12th term expires.

“It’s been a lot of fun and a lot of learning to it,” Deans said. “You get to know the town. Talking to the older people, you get the history of the town, so you’re prepared for whatever comes your way.”

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Deans is the second longtime town official to retire in the past couple of months. Town Clerk Joan Clough retired at the end of 2021 after serving 46 years.

Deans was raised in South Portland, but he spent a lot of time at a farm in Waterford owned by his mother’s family. He studied agriculture at the University of Maine. He moved to Oxford County, began working at a small dairy farm before accepting a job at Paris Farmers Union, where he worked for 40 years before retiring in 2017.

In an era before computers, Deans, 73, recalls keeping track of town records and using paper spreadsheets and ledger books. In fact, Hebron did not have a separate Town Office until 2004.

“I was working out of my home with all the paperwork and records and Joan was working out of her home as a tax collector, clerk and treasurer,” Deans said.

In 2004, the town converted a former elementary school on Route 119 into the Town Office.

He said he was kind of pushed into the role of chairman in the early 1990s when the previous chairman quit.

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“I had to pick up the pieces,” Deans said. “So it was taking the ledger books and, not having a background in bookkeeping and that sort of thing, I had to take my calculator and add and subtract to figure out how these numbers came to be, and went from there.”

He proved adept at helping to craft the town budget and carefully watching how taxpayers’ money was spent. Deans is proud that Hebron is debt free.

“We’ve had some big changes in the infrastructure in town,” he said. “Not only getting the Town Office. We built a second fire station. The town garage and the sand/salt shed. We got all new equipment for the highway department and the fire station. As of 2021, we had retired all of the long-term debt.”

Record keeping has evolved. What began with utilizing a No. 2 pencil and paper has slowly moved toward a combination of paper and computers, until this past year when Deans said the office is now fully computerized.

With the town debt free and modernized, Deans felt this is the right time to step aside.

He said he plans to take it easy and relax, while also keeping busy on his small farm, “putter around” taking care of his animals and do some haying.

“The town is in great shape moving forward,” Deans said.


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