Newcastle Town Administrator Ron Grenier will serve his final day on the job Fri., March 2.
Grenier’s departure concludes, for now, a career in public service dating to the late 1960s.
Grenier was born in Biddeford to a mother and father who worked at the nearby mills. He graduated from St. Louis High School, a Roman Catholic all-boys school in Biddeford.
Grenier’s humble beginnings impressed upon him the value of education.
He joined the U.S. Air Force in 1967, serving four years, including a stint on the island territory of Guam.
He met his wife, Bonnie, while stationed in Massachusetts. He and three other service members shared an apartment in Amherst, Mass., while she, a native of Springfield, was an undergraduate at Mt. Holyoke College in nearby South Hadley.
Grenier brought his bride home to Maine, where he attended St. Francis College on the G.I. Bill. By going to classes year ’round, he earned a Bachelor of Arts in business and a Bachelor of Science in political science in just two and a half years.
After graduation, Grenier got his first glimpse at local government as an intern in the office of Portland City Manager John Menario.
Grenier remembers Menario as a mentor and specifically recalls a tidbit of life-altering advice.
“He said, ‘Look, kid. You want to do anything in public administration, you get a master’s in public administration,” Grenier said. “That’s what I did.”
Grenier completed the degree at the Maxwell School of Public Citizenship of Syracuse University.
While still living in Syracuse, Grenier applied for a job as Boothbay Harbor’s town manager. He advanced to the final round and made the long drive to Boothbay Harbor – his first visit to the town – to interview.
“I remember thinking, ‘Oh, God, I want this job so bad,” Grenier said.
Boothbay Harbor didn’t hire him, instead opting for “a seasoned professional,” Grenier said, a Massachusetts retiree.
A disappointed Grenier accepted a job with the U.S. General Accounting Office, the congressional watchdog known today as the Government Accountability Office, and moved to Maryland.
“I wasn’t sure if I was ready to work in Washington, D.C. because I was still and always have been a Maine kid,” Grenier said.
Later, Grenier became a junior staffer on a budget committee tasked with the implementation of President Jimmy Carter’s zero-based budgeting, a challenging, but rewarding, assignment.
Grenier never fully adapted to life in the Beltway. He missed the ocean and his beloved New England sports teams, and, with his wife and their first son, he transferred to a regional office in the suburbs of Boston.
“I loved it,” Grenier said, and after three years in the post, he made “a career-ending decision.”
Grenier’s employer wanted him to return to Washington for a promotion. “I said, ‘I can’t come back,'” Grenier said.
Grenier found work as the executive assistant to the Massachusetts inspector general, where he planned audits and investigations of troubled state programs.
His report about the Division of Capital Planning and Operations – the agency responsible for the maintenance of all state buildings – earned the attention of the commissioner of the agency and of Gov. Michael Dukakis.
The commissioner hired Grenier as deputy commissioner to oversee the implementation of his recommendations and manage the daily operations of the agency.
During this time, Dukakis decided to embark on an extensive renovation of the Massachusetts State House.
A framed architect’s rendering of the famous Beacon Hill property hangs on Grenier’s office wall. Dukakis’ signature and an inscription bear evidence to the governor’s gratitude for Grenier’s planning of the project.
Grenier left the state government after Dukakis lost a 1990 bid for reelection. He became the director of capital and facilities planning for the Connecticut Dept. of Higher Education, a position with direct oversight of 33 campuses across the state.
He returned to Massachusetts as the director of administration for the central artery/tunnel project, best known as The Big Dig.
“I never worked so hard in my life,” Grenier said. He supervised a staff of 500 and directed “everything about The Big Dig except the technical engineering side.”
After several years, Grenier switched to a position as director of audit operations for the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority, where he would stay until his retirement from state government in 2005.
The family bought a house in Damariscotta the same year and Grenier started to pursue his dream – on hold for 35 years, but never abandoned – of becoming the administrator of a small Maine town.
He completed a certificate in town management at the Muskie School of Public Service.
The next year, he applied for a job as Damariscotta’s town manager. Once again, Grenier advanced to the final round, but this time, the roles were reversed. Grenier was the seasoned veteran of public service, while “some kid” fresh out of a public administration graduate program was his rival.
Damariscotta hired the kid – the 26-year-old Greg Zinser.
Grenier instead became the first town administrator of Chebeauge Island, helping the small town establish a municipal government from scratch after its secession from Cumberland.
For a year, Grenier commuted an hour and 45 minutes one way, driving from Damariscotta to Yarmouth, where he boarded a ferry for the short trip to the island.
The long commute and occasional rough seas sometimes left Grenier in a sleeping bag on the floor of the fire station.
He applied for and received the Newcastle job in 2008.
A theme of the steady and effusive praise for Grenier in the months since he announced his resignation has been his ability to right the ship, as one selectman said, of a foundering municipal government.
Grenier is reluctant to criticize his predecessor, though he acknowledged Newcastle was facing challenges as it transitioned to the town administrator form of government. Instead, Grenier spreads praise to those around him who helped with the turnaround.
Grenier called the board of selectmen who hired him – Pat Hudson, Ellen McFarland, Bob Plourde and Lee Straw – “the perfect match” to lead the town through the transition.
He praised the selectmen for their ethics and called them “people of conviction and of their word” who always kept the town’s interests at heart.
Longtime Town Clerk Lynn Maloney has been “invaluable,” sharing her institutional knowledge “and her capability to guide me and show me where the pitfalls were and to support me,” Grenier said.
“We went from a perfect storm to a perfect match,” he added.
Grenier wants the increase in cooperation with Damariscotta, including the formation of joint harbor and shellfish committees, the potential addition of a joint economic development committee and, perhaps most importantly, the establishment of joint public works operations, to be a legacy of his time in office.
“I’m very proud of having continued and expanded on what we all thought was important – for the towns to work more closely together on behalf of their citizens,” Grenier said.
Grenier looks forward to spending more time with his family – Bonnie, his wife of 41 years, sons Ben and Chris and three grandchildren under the age of six – in retirement.
“My wife is my best friend and partner,” Grenier said. “We love to do things together.”
Grenier, a devoted fan of all the Boston-area sports teams, particularly relishes sitting on his screened-in porch, watching the Red Sox all summer.
He also enjoys reading, particularly biographies, politics and world history, riding his bicycle and playing cribbage.
Last year, his oldest son, Ben, took him to a Boston Red Sox game, where they sat in the first row of the Green Monster seats, “a phenomenal way to view the game,” he said. He looks forward to taking his grandson to Fenway Park.
Finally, while Grenier does not plan to take another job, he will remain active in economic development in Damariscotta and Newcastle in a volunteer capacity.
Grenier, without providing specifics, said he will be “very involved” in the nascent Twin Villages Downtown Alliance, an organization that will open an office in downtown Damariscotta in the coming weeks.
Grenier said he looks forward with his involvement, to “bringing people together to ensure that our twin villages remain viable economically and successful well into the future.”
If Grenier’s accomplishments are any indication, the alliance has gained a strong and capable presence.
“I stood on the shoulders of very good people,” Grenier said of his career to date. “When people come together for a common cause everybody believes in, good things will happen.”
