FOREWORD
This document is reprinted with permission from "The Manager Plan in Maine" published by the Margaret Chase Smith Center for Public Policy. Copies of the complete book may be obtained by calling the Center at (207) 581-1646.
It is a deep pleasure to write this foreword to the history of the Council-Manager Plan in Maine. As a member of the Maine Town and City Management Association for eighty percent of its years of existence, I have had the opportunity to live through much of this history. It was a period during which local governments experienced major changes, by far the most being the employment of professional public administrators. This occurred not only in the largest jurisdictions such as Portland, Bangor and Lewiston, but also in the smallest such as Haynesville, Amity and Dyer Brook. Further, this practice of employing professionals extended to regional governments and to other forms of local government with Administrative Assistants. It is this broad group of individuals to whom recognition should be given for the success of the manager plan in Maine.
Certain individuals stand out for their early advocacy of the Council-Manager Plan. Professors O. C. Hormell of Bowdoin College and Edward F. Dow of the University of Maine are among them. Hormell was a charter consultant in the 1930s and 1940s who recommended the creation of the position of public administrator for local governments. Perhaps more than any other person, Dow could be called the father of Council-Manager Plan in Maine. His Reader's Digest article in the late 1940s on the public management program which he headed at the University of Maine (the first undergraduate program of its kind in the country) not only gave national recognition to this relatively new form of government, but brought it forcefully to the attention of Maine citizens. As a result, Maine towns and cities moved rapidly to adopt the Council-Manager Plan, at one time leading the nation in the number of municipalities operating under it.
No history of the manager plan in Maine would be complete without the inclusion of the origin and activation of the Maine Town and City Management Association, the New England Managers Institute it created, and the individual managers who became national leaders as a result of their involvement in the organization.
The Maine Town and City Management Association, created in 1941 as one of the first state organizations of its kind in the country, has, since its inception, strived to provide appropriate professional development opportunities for municipal administrators. Working with the University of Maine, it developed the New England Managers Institute in 1946, the first training program of its kind for town and city managers. Over the years, leaders of the MTCMA and the Institute became actively involved in the International City Management Association with three serving as President of ICMA (Woodbury Brackett of Auburn in 1960, Joseph Coupal of Bangor in 1965, Osmond Bonsey of Yarmouth in 1987) and three serving as Vice President (Julian Orr of Portland, Leo Morency of Rumford, John Bibber of Brunswick).
The development of the manager plan in Maine and the creation of the Maine Town and City Management Association and its attendant activities are well defined in the following pages of this document. It is a history of significant change in local government, a change that swept across the state motivated in great measure by the advocacy undertaken by Professors Hormell and Dow and the leadership and professionalism exhibited by Maine's public administrators.
Osmond C. Bonsey
Range Rider
Maine Town and City Management Association