By Carol Coultas,Staff Writer

LEWISTON – Dick Barringer wears many hats: professor, policymaker, planner, environmentalist.

But at Thursday’s Great Falls Forum presentation he was wearing a different hat altogether: visionary.

Barringer, public policy professor at the Muskie School of Public Service, encouraged a crowd assembled in the library’s Marsden Hartley Cultural Center to re-imagine Maine. To get past the political and bureaucratic goo that mires progress and imagine a state where people and natural resources are valued above all else.

“Most of all, we need to continue to invest in the places, the people and the resources of Maine,” he said.

Barringer framed a discussion of Maine’s future by first taking a look at its past, its transition from an agrarian and manufacturing-based economy to today’s knowledge-based economy. Then he brought the audience to today, where more and more of Maine’s economy is concentrated in cities, where fewer and fewer people choose to live.

The result? Sprawl, and the stress of trying to support separate places to work, live, shop and worship that are not integrated.

“The question is how to become more urban to keep what’s special about Maine,” he said.

And there’s some urgency. He noted that petroleum reserves might last another 45 years, creating a crisis if we don’t come up with alternative energy sources and modes of transportation. One of Barringer’s associates, Evan Richert, predicts that Maine has about 20 years left to plan its growth, after which much of Maine’s unique character will have been paved under by development.

There is hope, though. He sees it here.

Barringer lauded the recent effort of Lewiston and Auburn to combine municipal services.

“That’s exactly what I mean when I say re-imagining Maine,” he said. “These are not two cities separated by a river … but one community.”

He also said there has to be greater collaboration between political parties, saying that he’s never seen the “us versus them” mentality so vociferous as it is now in Washington and Augusta.

A state planner under former Gov. Ken Curtis, Barringer noted that the eight years of his Democratic administration eliminated more poverty and initiated more economic development than any other – a tribute to the partnership between the governor and the Republican-controlled State House.

“They learned to get along for the greater good,” he said.

One member of the audience spoke of the clash between Poland Spring and some western Maine towns that are opposed to new bottling operations proposed by the water company, asking Barringer how to find common ground.

He suggested bringing in more civic leadership – perhaps even the governor – to defuse the rancor and find a compromise. It was a solution he wished he could have better used back when the spruce budworm invaded Maine’s forests. As the state’s conservation commissioner, he approached the timber companies about finding an ecologically sound solution to the infestation. But the matter had already been turned over to company lawyers.

“If you leave an issue like this in the hands of the advocacy groups and they turn it over to the lawyers, well, it’s a very big mistake,” he said.