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On winter mornings after a storm, Greenville town manager John Simko gets his daughter Ashley ready for school early. He loads his chain saw, chaps, and helmet into the back of his pickup truck, and off they go—she to kindergarten and he to work—stopping along their roundabout route to clear downed trees from the roadway. After all, someone has to do it.
“I like to get my hands dirty,” he says.
Simko is a tall, energetic man with a death-grip handshake and a passion for the outdoors. At 36, the Dover-Foxcroft native has been Greenville’s town manager for the past seven years. He’s also a firefighter, an emergency medical technician, and a one-time candidate for the Maine State Senate.
His love for the mountainous landscape of northern Maine is apparent. “People should get out and climb mountains,” he declares. “It gives you an appreciation for our land base. And you can climb at any time of year.”
Simko does not hunt, and he prefers mountain bikes and canoes to snowmobiles and ATVs. But he defends so-called “traditional” uses of the land, and as a member and past president of the Maine Woods Coalition, he has been active in opposing the creation of a national park in the area.
“Personally and professionally, I thought it was a bad idea,” he says. “If the goal of a national park is to create an amenity that people will come and visit, there’s ultimately going to be a demand for more services—fire and rescue, trash cans that have to be emptied, things like that. With a federal entity, there would be less of a tax base to support
those services.”
Simko sits on several boards and task forces concerned with economic development and land use in the region, including Eastern Maine Development Corporation and the Coalition to Preserve and Grow Northern Maine. Though “there hasn’t been much traction” on the national park in the last couple of years, Simko says other issues, such as the proposed Plum Creek development on Moosehead Lake and Roxanne Quimby’s land purchases, have arisen to take its place.
A Democrat in a decidedly conservative part of Maine, Simko frequently finds himself outnumbered at meetings. After graduating from Bowdoin in 1992, he worked for two years in the Washington office of Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell. “It was an exciting time,” he says. “Washington is run by the blood, sweat, and tears of 20-somethings. It was good priming for this job. In town management, you have to be able to turn on your heel, and address a wide range of issues with some degree of authority.”
He admits that some of the area’s conservatism may have rubbed off on him. “My Republican friends up here keep trying to convert me, and my Democrat friends in southern Maine think I’ve already converted,” he says. “I have developed a stronger appreciation for the private sector. If you don’t support the private sector, you don’t have much of an economy.”
As one of a handful of trained EMTs in town, Simko is often called upon in emergencies. He’s also a single dad, which means he and five-year-old Ashley have to “work together” when duty calls. “She knows the drill,” he says.
Simko recalls a surprise October snowstorm a year ago, in which father and daughter rushed to the scene of a two-car accident. While Simko rendered care to the victims, an ambulance attendant sat in his truck with Ashley, and another volunteer drove her to the hospital while her dad rode in the ambulance. Later, Simko called the town office asking after the whereabouts of his truck and daughter. He was told, jokingly, that “she was last seen driving in the direction of Jackman.”
