HALLOWELL — An old hand in municipal government is set to join the City Council through year’s end, pending council approval.

At the council meeting on Monday, Mayor Charlotte Warren will nominate David Bustin of Water Street, a former Hallowell mayor, to fill the term of Councilor Edmund Cervone, who announced his resignation last month.

Warren said Bustin, 75, who couldn’t be reached for comment on Friday, was picked for his municipal experience. He served as mayor from 1996 to 2002. In 2008, he also won a one-year term on the council after a councilor resigned.

Bustin will assume Cervone’s committee spots, including the chairmanship of the council’s Protection Committee, if the council approves him Monday, the mayor said.

That committee handles public safety issues and is currently working to negotiate Hallowell’s next contract with Augusta for ambulance services.

“He is somebody who is already up to speed,” Warren said of Bustin. “We need somebody to step in right away and Dave is that person.”

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Bustin will only be a placeholder in the councilor-at-large seat, which is up for election in November.

The declared candidates for that race are George Lapointe of Middle Street, a former state marine resources commissioner, and Andrew McPherson, a Chamberlain Drive engineer with 10 years of council experience.

Bustin is an ex-Augusta insider who was a Democratic state representative and the state personnel commissioner in the 1970s and ‘80s. Last year, he ran for a Maine Senate seat and almost won it, losing by just 229 votes to Sen. Pat Flood, R-Winthrop.

Warren, who runs a political consulting firm, worked on Bustin’s campaign. Records filed with the Maine Commission on Governmental Ethics and Election Practices show Warren was paid $2,000 by Bustin’s taxpayer-funded campaign for “campaign management and consulting.”

During that race, he told the Kennebec Journal he was using the same campaign sign design he created for one of Warren’s mayoral campaigns.

Michael Shepherd — 621-5632
mshepherd@mainetoday.com


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