The Skowhegan Municipal Building at 225 Water St., photographed in June. Anna Chadwick/Morning Sentinel file

SKOWHEGAN — Skowhegan officials decided Tuesday night to hold a special election Feb. 11, 2025, to fill a vacancy created earlier this month on the Board of Selectmen.

The decision means the board is to remain short a member for another 3 1/2 months.

Since Vice Chairman Charles Robbins III resigned, effective Oct. 1, due to increasing personal and professional obligations, the board has had four of its five seats filled.

Board Chairman Paul York said the lack of a fifth selectman has at least once threatened the board’s ability to have a quorum at a meeting. A quorum is the minimum number of selectmen who must be present to make a meeting legal and valid.

“Obviously, we need to fill this sooner than later,” York said, “because we could have run into a major issue last meeting. We were down to three. If someone had been out, we wouldn’t have been able to hold our meeting.”

To fill the vacancy, the Board of Selectmen had the option of waiting until regular municipal elections in June or holding a special election, according to Town Manager Dawn DiBlasi. February was the soonest the board could call the election within normal procedure that requires nomination papers to be made available 100 days before an election.

Gail Pelotte, the town clerk and treasurer, told board members they could vote to shorten the nomination period, but they decided to keep the standard 100-day window.

Town officials also acknowledged that staff members at the Office of the Town Clerk and Treasurer have been busy in the lead-up to Election Day, which is Nov. 5 and has drawn strong interest in absentee voting statewide.

Pelotte said her staff members would be able to handle the additional work of overseeing another election, no matter what the Board of Selectmen decides.

“It’s a way of life,” Pelotte said Tuesday of the extra work another election would bring. “We can handle it.”

The winner of the February election is to serve the remainder of Robbins’ term, which runs through June 2026. Robbins was elected to his second three-year term in 2023.