CANTON — Selectmen Brian Keene and Robert Walker are seeking re-election next week, along with former Selectman Wallace Haynes.

Balloting for the two, three-year seats will be held Tuesday, June 14.

Keene has been on the board the past three years. With a background in technology, he said, he has contributed to improvements to the town website and Facebook page, and to Town Office technology.

He said he has a lot of in-depth experience dealing with the day-to-day operations of the office.

“I’m the go-to person as far as anything that they need,” he said.

He is involved in budgeting and financial aspects of the board, he said.

An accomplishment he is proud of is the Town-Owned Land Committee, charged with studying and inventorying all town land and buildings and making a plan for the future. The plan involved a new Town Office and moving the highway garage.

“The last part of the plan that we still have yet to complete is the (sale of) 38 or 39 acres of the Village Ridge project,” he said. The plans that were originally made for the project had fallen through years ago and the town has been paying that debt off slowly, he said.

“I think that would be a great thing for us to get rid of,” he said.

Another issue on the horizon is revenue from a wind turbine project, he said.

“We need to sit down and plan ahead for that, so we don’t get stuck in the future with higher bills and not being prepared,” Keene said.

Keene is married and has two children.

Walker is finishing his first three-year term, after serving on the Budget Committee.

“So, I’ve been involved in town (business) for the last six-plus years,” he said.

He said the board and the town have been “moving in a positive direction, and I’d like to keep that direction moving forward.”

He also cited the committee’s work on inventorying town properties.

“Part of (our work) was condensing the town-owned properties from five town-owned properties to three,” he said. Getting those excess properties back on the tax rolls and relocating the Town Office were among its achievements, he said.

Walker helped with the move of the town garage to the state highway lot and ensured that the town sand pile, salt and equipment were all in the same location, he said.

“I’d like to work on getting more businesses into town, (since) Canton’s kind of a pass-through location,” he said. “We’re working on a few things to try to get businesses to come to town, and for people to move to town,” he said. People moving to town and building houses will bring up the tax base which will lower taxes in the long run.

Walker is married and has one daughter in high school. He has lived in Canton for 24 years.

Haynes is a former three-term selectman concerned about following through on plans made in the aftermath of the major flood by the Androscoggin River more than a decade ago.

He would like to rejoin the board to “see if we can fix the things we thought we were going to do but didn’t do as a town,” he said.

For example, “we were supposed to use some of the funds we got from the buyouts (of houses) to revitalize the downtown area and try to attract more businesses and attract new homeowners to the area, and it didn’t seem to come to fruition like it should have.”

Haynes said he understands that much of reason for the higher property taxes are dictated by the school budget. He said he’d “like to revisit what we’re doing with the school, and if we want to stay in (Regional School Unit 10) or not.”

Haynes said he also like to find ways to younger people and new homeowners in town, see more opportunities for people to start businesses in Canton and the River Valley.

Haynes is married with three daughters. He has been a lifelong resident of the area. 

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