Maine Town & City Magazine Features Community Heart & Soul

Community Heart & Soul towns across Maine are gaining attention! Maine Municipal Association, the organization serving local governments in the state, featured several municipalities’ adoption of Community Heart & Soul in its March 2024 edition of Maine Town & City. Maine Town & City is a monthly magazine for local government leaders.

The feature article highlights Van Buren, Maine, one of the newest Heart & Soul towns in the state. Van Buren’s Town Manager Luke Dyer initiated the process last year with the help of a $10,000 Community Heart & Soul Seed Grant. He chose Community Heart & Soul because it involves residents from the start, ensuring support and adoption of municipal plans.

“This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” he says. “I started searching the internet, looking for a model that we could follow—how to do our own community workshops— something that we could follow that I thought would keep us from getting in that same situation— where we wouldn’t suddenly find ourselves on the defensive.”

Other Maine communities featured in the article include Bucksport, the Mahoosuc area, and Damariscotta. Read the full article: