HOULTON, Maine — The Houlton Rotary Club met for its luncheon meeting on Monday, Sept. 25, which featured guest speaker Ryan Pelletier.
Pelletier was appointed the Aroostook County Administrator this past July, leaving his post as town manager of Madawaska. He was the guest of Rotarian Paul Adams, who is one of the three County Commissioners working with Pelletier.
While Pelletier is hired, the commissioners are elected officials. Each of Maine’s 16 counties elects three to five commissioners. Fiscal operations and policy decisions are central to the County Commissioners’ duties as well as tax abatement appeals and hearings on town road maintenance.
Adams is the senior member of the Aroostook County Commissioners and he serves with Paul Underwood and Norman Fournier. They represent the south, central and northern areas of the County, respectively.
Predating statehood and even the Declaration of Independence, County Government is Maine’s oldest form of government. The structure is a pyramid with the voters of Aroostook on top as the electorate. The next tier is the elected commissioners and elected finance committee, and the third tier are the elected sheriff and the elected District Attorney who is a state employee.
Tiers four and five are appointed offices such as Chief Deputy Sheriff and Assistant DA, law enforcement and corrections. The voters of Aroostook also elect the Registers of Deeds (North and South), County Treasurer, Judge of Probate and Register of Probate and all of their deputies are appointed.
Pelletier’s job is at the top of the Aroostook County Government as an appointed official and he has an appointed executive assistant. Many jobs are in the County Government that are also appointed such as emergency management agency director, human resources manager, finance analyst and director of the unorganized territories and director of facilities and information technology.
The Unorganized territory services are funded by a separate and distinct budget developed by the County and paid for by the taxpayers of the unorganized towns. To support the County budget each municipality is assessed a fee each year.
County Government employs a total of 90 full-time, six part-time and 67 on-call employees. Contact information for the County Commissioner office is 144 Sweden St., Suite 1, in Caribou and the phone number is 493-3318. The website for the County Commissioners is www.aroostook.me.us. |DNP:true
