HAMPDEN, Maine — Former mayor Carol Duprey has forfeited her position on the Town Council because she has missed six meetings over the last year, according to the current mayor.
“The rules are the rules,” Mayor David Ryder said Monday, referring to a 2013 amendment to the town charter designed to improve attendance by councilors. “There’s nothing we can do, really. It is what it is. You vote in the rules, I guess, and you have to go by them.
“I explained that to her, thinking she maybe could do a letter of resignation, but she chose not to go that road,” Ryder said.
An interim council member will not be appointed to Duprey’s seat because the town’s next regular election in November is less than six months away, Ryder said.
Duprey did not respond to telephone calls and emails last week and Monday seeking comment on the matter.
Duprey was absent for regular meetings on March 2, May 18, June 15 and Aug. 17 as well as special meetings on July 13 and July 27 conducted for the purpose of selecting and then appointing a new town manager, according to the Declaration of Forfeiture of Office that town councilors will be taking up during a regular meeting on Tuesday night. The meeting starts at 7 p.m. in the Council Chambers.
Ryder said that he asked the town clerk to tally up Duprey’s absences after they were brought up by a resident.
Duprey was elected to her three-year at-large seat in November 2012 and served as mayor from January 2014 to January 2015. Her term was set to expire in November.
She was a proponent of a 2013 town charter amendment that triggered the automatic forfeiture of her seat, according to her council colleagues.
The charter change was aimed at addressing meeting absences that sometimes left the council without a quorum and as such unable to conduct business.
Before the amendment, councilors were able to miss up to three consecutive meetings or up to six regular meetings in a calendar year without being excused by their fellow members.
Once voters approved the amendment, absences from special meetings began to count and to apply to the prior 12-month period. Before that, councilors could have missed the maximum number of meetings and would get a clean slate again on Jan. 1.
“I know she supported [the charter change],” Ryder said. “She’d been pushing the council rules pretty hard. She said there were no consequences [for excessive absences]. I’m thinking this turned out very weird.”
Duprey’s time on the council, especially her year as mayor, was marked by controversy. She was cleared of breaching the town’s code of ethics in 2014 after a political action committee she formed with her husband paid for negative robocalls against two council candidates. The council subsequently registered a 6-1 vote of no confidence in her ability to lead them — with Duprey casting the lone vote in support of her performance as mayor.
Despite being asked to step down from the post after the no-confidence vote, Duprey said she had done nothing wrong and served out her term as mayor. Her fellow councilors had no way of compelling her to step down.