WESTBROOK – Residents have called for the resignation of Lyle Cramer as Ward 3 councilor, since the city discovered last month that he actually lives in Ward 4.

“He should step down. I think that would be the proper thing to do,” said Paul LeConte, a Ward 3 resident.

Cramer said he’s considering vacating the council seat but is still weighing whether it’s a good idea.

If he resigns, a Republican would be named to serve the remainder of his term, which runs until the end of this year. Cramer said he worries about leaving his seat for the next two months in the hands of someone not quite up to speed with the issues before the council. However, if he does stay, he said, his votes could be challenged by residents upset that Cramer does not live in the ward he represents.

Cramer said he’s still not sure how he and his Conant Street neighbors were registered as Ward 3 voters when they actually lived in Ward 4.

According to Cramer, he lived in Ward 3 until the city was redistricted in 1994 in order to balance the number of people who lived in each of the city’s five wards. He and his neighbors then began voting in Ward 4.

Several years later, Cramer said, they were told they were part of Ward 3 again and Cramer was appointed as the Ward 3 warden, overseeing the ward’s polls at election time.

However, when Cramer pointed out to City Clerk Lynda Adams last month that his home appeared to fall in Ward 4, according to a map in the clerk’s office, she discovered that, in the city’s code, Conant Street is, in fact, in Ward 4.

Both Cramer and Adams say they don’t know why the change was made.

According to Adams, in order for the boundaries of a ward to be changed, the city council would have to vote on the matter. That never happened, even though some residents were apparently re-designated to Ward 3 in the city’s voter database around 2002.

Adams said she’s notifying those 75 or so residents that they should vote in Ward 4 in the coming election.

The city clerk at the time of the change was Barbara Hawkes. She said she remembered there were a lot of complaints from Conant Street residents who didn’t want to be in Ward 4 after the 1994 redistricting. However, she said, she couldn’t remember how or when the change was made.

Regardless of the confusion, LeConte said, for someone with a history in politics like Cramer, who served as a city councilor before, it’s hard to believe he wasn’t aware of where his ward’s boundaries were before now.

“I find it incredible to believe that anyone who’s run as often as Lyle has doesn’t know where his lines are,” he said.

Cramer, however, said since he didn’t have to campaign for his current seat – he replaced Ed Symbol, who left the council to fill a vacancy on the School Committee – he wasn’t quite sure where the lines fell. That’s why he checked the map in the clerk’s office as he was preparing for an upcoming campaign. But he didn’t expect to find his own home outside the lines.

“I was totally surprised,” he said.

According to City Administrator Jerre Bryant, City Solicitor Bill Dale could not find a legal reason Cramer would be required to vacate the seat. Mayor Bruce Chuluda and Martha Day, chairwoman of Westbrook’s Republican City Committee, both said they’d leave the decision in Cramer’s hands.

But Cramer is still weighing the pros and cons of giving up his seat. After spending nearly two years with some complicated issues that are still in front of the council, like the debate between Pike and Idexx regarding the rezoning of the Five Star Industrial Park, he thinks it would be unproductive to have someone new come in for a couple of months and vote.

At the same time, Cramer said, if he votes on one of those issues, an opponent could challenge his right to vote – the sort of controversy he would rather avoid.

But, if he does decide to leave the council, Cramer said, he wouldn’t want Ward 3 to go unrepresented. One Westbrook Republican said he’d be willing to come forward to fill the spot.

Reggie Washby, who ran for at-large councilor twice in the past decade, has been considering campaigning as a write-in candidate for the Ward 3 seat, against Democrat Paul Emery, who is currently running unopposed. He said he’d be willing, also, to fill in for Cramer for the remainder of the term.

However, that’s another reason Cramer is hesitant to leave before his term is finished. He said he doesn’t want to appear to leave for the sole reason of giving a Republican write-in candidate more visibility before the election.

Washby thinks the matter is much simpler than that.

“He’s not in the ward. He should step down,” Washby said.