Land leader | Dairy farmer and former legislator heads up GrowSmart Maine
Photo/Courtesy Nancy Smith
Nancy Smith believes her years as a Maine legislator will help her be an effective leader for GrowSmart Maine. She was hired as executive director of the sustainable development group in April.
When GrowSmart Maine last year cut its staff and parted company with its founding executive director, Alan Caron, the viability of the organization appeared in question.
Not so, says Nancy Smith, who started work as the sustainable growth nonprofit’s new director on April 13, just after the conclusion of the legislative session. Smith is perhaps best known as a four-term Democratic state representative from Monmouth who, for six years, co-chaired the Legislature’s Business, Research and Economic Development Committee. She had earlier signed up as a candidate for the state Senate, but withdrew after landing the full-time GrowSmart position.
Smith embraces the Portland organization’s agenda of economic development through sound planning, and says she hopes to broaden the group’s focus. “I bring a connection to the farm and forestry businesses that have to be a big part of keeping our communities vibrant,” she says, sitting at the kitchen table in her early 19th-century farmhouse in Monmouth. Smith spent more than a decade working in the paper industry and for forestry consultant Lloyd Irland.
In addition to her legislative career, Smith has run an organic farm with her husband, Ivan, for nearly two decades. Snafu Acres, as it is known, had a dairy herd until last year and now concentrates on grass-fed livestock, producing beef, pork, veal, chickens and turkeys.
Smith says her experience with coalition-building will be important to GrowSmart’s continued success. “We have to emphasize both downtowns and the working landscape,” she says. “We sometimes leave out the people who work the land, and they have to be part of the picture.”
Founded in 2002, GrowSmart seemed to experience a retrenchment after the cutbacks and funding crisis of last summer. “We’ve continued to work on projects we’ve had all along,” Smith says. The group’s biggest splash came in 2006 with the landmark GrowSmart-Brookings Institution “Charting Maine’s Future” report, and it has now commissioned a follow up, from Caron, on reinventing government that’s due out in May.
“We haven’t been producing as much publicity, but we haven’t lost our focus,” Smith says, pointing to the nonprofit’s model town project in Standish. One of Maine’s fastest-growing towns, Standish experienced decades of sprawling growth, but in 2006 enacted a comprehensive plan that re-emphasizes its village centers.
Another project for the coming year will be cementing a “green-brown” alliance between organizations that focus on urban issues and those oriented more toward rural and environmental issues. “We’re working on the same issues, but we don’t always realize what we have in common,” Smith says.
Putting groups like the Maine Development Foundation’s Downtown Center and the Maine Historic Preservation Commission together with organizations that represent blueberry farmers and commercial fishing might seem like a stretch, but Smith sees it as vital. Overcoming opposition can be accomplished through coalitions, she says, starting with fellow legislators. She has worked through farming and fishing issues with Rep. Leila Percy, who co-chaired the Marine Resources Committee, and Republicans such as Chris Rector, who has served in the House and now the Senate.“When you go to the Legislature, there’s always going to be resistance to change. It’s human nature,” she says. While GrowSmart’s work extends well beyond the State House, Smith says that success there will continue to be a key to its endeavors.
As contrasted with her legislative career, which was based on two-year election cycles, she sees GrowSmart as offering a different way to look at the state. “Our focus is on how Maine will look and feel 50 years from now,” she says. “How do we maintain the real attractiveness we have while achieving the prosperity we also want?”
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