TOPSHAM — Board of Selectmen candidate Ruth Lyons, who retired earlier this year as longtime town clerk, received 3,281 votes Tuesday to unseat incumbent Selectman Ronald Riendeau.

Incumbent Selectman David Douglass was re-elected with 1,916 votes; Riendeau had 1,766 in the three-way race.

Lyons said on Wednesday that she was “overwhelmed” by the results, and expressed gratitude to her town.

“I love the people of Topsham … and the faith they put in me,” she said.

Lyons’s path to government service began in 1990, when she challenged a property revaluation done at a time when real estate values had declined. She said the town was “trying to get the (revaluation) done before the market fell, and that was wrong,” she said in April.

After a Town Meeting was held, abatements of about $400,000 were awarded to residents. The town then offered a job as assistant tax collector to Lyons. She became deputy town clerk in 1991, and then town clerk in 1992.

Lyons was named Clerk of the Year in 2013 by the Maine Town & City Clerks Association, and retired June 30 after 22 years in the office.

She was president of the state clerks association from 2005-2006, president several times of the Sagadahoc County Clerks Association, and organized several New England clerks conferences.

Lyons also served on the Maine Municipal Association’s Conference Committee last year, and has been on the board of directors of the New England Municipal Clerks Institute, from which she graduated in 1994.

She also has chaired the Maine Town & City Clerks scholarship committee, was an executive board member on the Southern Midcoast Chamber of Commerce, and has been treasurer of the Sagadahoc Agricultural and Horticultural Fair Association.

Douglass has lived in Topsham for 13 years. He was a firefighter-emergency medical technician with the Brunswick Fire Department from 1996-2006, a captain with the Topsham Fire Department from 1998-2004, and has worked in sales and marketing with the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. since 2006.

Douglass served on the Finance Committee from 2002-2011, and was its chairman from 2009-2011. He stepped down when he was elected to the Board of Selectmen.

Riendeau was born on Walnut Street in Topsham and has lived in the town almost his entire life. He and his wife have run Riendeau Auction Service for about 35 years.

Riendeau, who has served most of five terms on the Board of Selectmen and is its current chairman, worked for the Police Department for about 20 years and from 1964-1978 was police chief. He was in the U.S. Army from 1959-1961.

Alex Lear can be reached at 781-3661 ext. 113 or alear@theforecaster.net. Follow him on Twitter: @learics.

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No contests in School Administrative District 75

Incumbents Jane Scease and Jeffrey Wolkens were uncontested for re-election Tuesday to the School Administrative District 75 Board of Directors, receiving 3,312 and 2,599 votes, respectively.

Matthew Drewette-Card was unopposed in a bid to replace James Conners, who is not seeking re-election, and earned 2,536 votes.

Scease was also uncontested in her run for Sagadahoc County treasurer.

— Alex Lear

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