Douglass, Lyons retain Topsham Board of Selectmen seats

TOPSHAM — Dave Douglass and Ruth Lyons were re-elected to the Board of Selectmen Tuesday, fending off a challenge from John Graham.

Four incumbents on the School Administrative District 75 Board of Directors, meanwhile, were unopposed and elected to new terms.

With two seats open on the Board of Selectmen, Lyons received 2,054 votes, followed by Douglass with 1,462 and Graham with 943. There were also 1,605 blanks.

“I’m thankful to the people,” Lyons said Wednesday. “It’s just so wonderful when you have so much support in your community. I’ll do my very best job, and I just want to do the will of the people, whatever that majority is.”

“I’m very excited to continue the work I have been doing for the past six years,” Douglass said Tuesday, “and I am even more excited by the margin of victory given to me by the voters of Topsham.”

Lyons was Topsham’s assistant tax collector and then deputy town clerk before becoming town clerk in 1992. She was named Clerk of the Year in 2013 by the Maine Town & City Clerks Association, retired in 2014 and recently left her position as assistant town clerk in Lisbon.

Two years after winning a seat on the Board of Selectmen, Lyons ran for state House District 54, and lost to Rep. Denise Tepler, D-Topsham, by fewer than 300 votes.

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 in 2015 and was 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 of the Southern Midcoast Chamber of Commerce and has been treasurer of the Sagadahoc Agricultural and Horticultural Fair Association.

Douglass has lived in Topsham since 2001. He was a firefighter-EMT 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 Reynolds American tobacco company since 2006.

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

Graham is president of the Friends of the Frank J. Wood Bridge, which seeks to save the 85-year-old structure. He has also served on Topsham’s Historic District Commission since 2014 and ran unsuccessfully last year against Selectmen Marie Brillant and Bill Thompson.

In the SAD 75 election, Jane Scease received 1,872 votes, Andrea Imrie 1,834, Matthew Drewette-Card 1,716 votes, and Jeffrey Wolkens 1,671.

Just over 40 percent of the town’s 7,526 registered voters cast ballots.