HOULTON, Maine — Houlton’s two remaining councilors appointed three men Tuesday night to fill three of five vacant seats.
The move gave the council a quorum following the resignations of five members in the aftermath of the town manager’s September felony arrest.
Town attorney Dan Nelson explained to a crowd packed into council chambers that it was the job of the remaining members of the Town Council — Edward Lake and Eileen McLaughlin — to repopulate the board according to the town charter.
“They will need to try to appoint three additional council members and after they are sworn in, [the council] can resume council activities,” Nelson said.
The three council appointees — Jeffrey Maguire, Jantzen Craine and John “J.J.” Schools — will serve one-year terms ending at the 2026 November election, Nelson said.
On Sept. 25, Town Manager Cameron Clark was arrested and jailed by the Aroostook County Sheriff’s Office on felony victim tampering and domestic violence assault charges. Since that time, public unrest escalated following the Town Council’s decision to keep Clark on the job despite calls to place him on leave until the matter was resolved in the courts.
By last week tensions reached a boiling point as three of the town’s largest departments declared they had lost confidence in the town manager and the council, and a group of residents took steps to oust councilors from their seats. Additionally, councilors Jon McLaughlin and Alexis Brown resigned from the council because they did not agree with the group’s decision to keep Clark on the job, citing moral and ethical concerns.
In an emergency meeting Friday afternoon, the remaining four councilors — Chairperson Jane Torres, Edward Lake, Jim Peters, Erin Matthews and Eileen McLaughlin — voted to appoint Town Clerk Khylee Wampler as assistant town manager and place Clark on administrative leave.
That decision was followed by the unexpected resignations of Torres, Peters and Matthews, effectively leaving the town without a governing body because the council no longer had a quorum. The two remaining councilors, McLaughlin and Lake, were unable to conduct municipal business until new members were appointed in a special meeting Tuesday.
Houlton’s charter specifies four members and a chairperson are needed for a quorum.
During Tuesday’s special meeting, Lake said they had a long list of people interested in the open council seats. At the beginning of the meeting Lake said they made their decision on the three candidates, despite several interested candidates waiting for an opportunity to be heard.
Some at the meeting called into question the council’s compliance with Maine’s open meeting law because all deliberations are considered public proceedings and must be held in public.
Nonetheless, according to Maine law, the councilors may review applications, interview candidates or form recommendations prior to the public meeting as long as the nomination and vote are public.
Additionally, it was not clear what seat each new councilor was filling.
The new councilors come from varied backgrounds: Maguire owns a personal security business and provides personal protection to famous people, such as multi-Grammy-winning singer Rihanna; Schools is a Houlton native who retired as a senior chief petty officer from the U.S. Navy; and Craine is the general manager of the Ivey’s Motor Lodge in Houlton.
“Houlton has definitely been through an unprecedented last couple weeks; it’s been very different and some things we have never been through before,” Craine said. “I enjoyed hearing all the public comments … there was definitely a common theme that the residents want transparency and better communication and that’s good.”
