The politics of the Paris Board of Selectmen took another unfortunate turn Monday when Selectman Glen Young decided to obstruct the will of the voters.

By refusing to provide the vote necessary to schedule a recall election for Selectman Troy Ripley and Board Chairman David Ivey, Young is playing a discouraging game of monkey in the middle.

Keep in mind that Young was the impetus for the creation of the recall ordinance in the first place. After missing several meetings in 2008, selectmen decided voters needed a way to recall or remove elected officials who were not performing their duties.

As is often the case in small town politics, a committee was formed and an ordinance crafted. Many towns in Maine have similar ordinances.

Earlier this year, Paris voters, by nearly a 3-to-1 margin, enacted the new ordinance.

While the ordinance itself is flawed because it allows selectmen to set the date for their own recall, which set up the scenario Monday that’s not the heart of the problem.

Instead of using the recall ordinance to oust Young, petitioners now want to recall the four other selectmen. This all came in the heat over the town’s manager being fired.

Petitions for two of those recalls were approved two weeks ago, and selectmen were required under the ordinance to set a date for the recall election by Monday night.

Instead of simply moving forward, Young argued at Monday night’s meeting that the votes should be conducted on separate days, so each selectman could stand or fall on his own merit.

It’s an odd and hypocritical spin, given that Young was among those who campaigned with a partner, in his case David Ivey, for election.

Meanwhile, pending in Paris is another decision by the same board to schedule yet another recall vote for the purpose of recalling two other selectmen on the board, Lloyd “Skip” Herrick and Raymond Glover.

Both Glover and Herrick supported setting a single date for the recall votes. Selectmen Ivey and Ripley abstained because they are the subject of the recall vote. Since it takes three votes to move forward, Young was able to stall the decision with his insistence on separate votes.

Herrick, boldly and rightly, suggested the town move as quickly as possible to dispense with the uncertainty and hold the recall vote for all four selectmen on the same day.

“I just don’t understand why we would put the citizens and voters of this town through anything but one vote,” Herrick said. We don’t, either.

This would not only save voters’ time, but would also save the town money. Separate elections would be four times as expensive as one.

Young is simply trying to obstruct the process put in place by voters, a display of arrogance that confirms why voters wanted a recall process in the first place.

We urge the board to quickly set a single date, get the recall election behind it and move forward with the people’s business.

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