Edgecomb Fire Chief Roy Potter doesn't mind that he's not on the town's ordinance review committee anymore.

He's just bothered that nobody contacted him directly about it, he said.

All he's had to go by on the subject are emails that were carbon-copied to him.

“It just seems a little odd to me,” he said at a selectmen's meeting October 21. The board was formally empaneling the committee's new, smaller version that the planning board recently put together.

The aim was to help ensure enough members show up to be able to hold the meetings, planning board vice chairman Barry Hathorne has said.

At Monday's meeting, Hathorne reiterated that the lack of a quorum had repeatedly wasted committee members' time, including his.

“We just couldn't do any work this summer,” he said.

According to Hathorne, the planning board wasn’t targeting specific members for removal when it regrouped the committee. “We didn’t cut anybody specifically, for any particular reason,” he told Potter.

Potter said he's sorry he hasn't made every meeting, but he can't control when there'll be a fire call or when one of his children has a soccer game. He was a little surprised to learn he was off the committee, he said.

“We're lacking communication,” Potter said.

Hathorne told Potter that the committee would look to him as an adviser, and contact him with any questions that involve the fire department. Any residents who have opinions should come share them at the committee's meetings, he said.

“Fair enough,” Potter said.

The committee has been at the center of recent controversy, beginning with selectman and then-committee member Stuart Smith criticizing the panel for not being more focused on the land use ordinance.

Hathorne later wrote in an email that selectmen have hindered the committee's effectiveness by not attending meetings.

Selectmen’s Chairman Jack Sarmanian agreed Monday night to serve as the selectmen's liaison to the committee. He will be able to attend the meetings, he said.