Galen Koch: [00:00:00] That’s great. I’ll hold this. And then, if you have the papers, just try not to rustle them too much. It is November 30th. We’re at the Presumpscot Regional Land Trust office in Westbrook, and if you could just say your first name. Introduce yourself. Full name.

Mike Parker: [00:00:18] My name is Mike.

Galen Koch: [00:00:21] Mike? Full name.

Mike Parker: [00:00:22] Okay. Mike Parker. I came to the Land Trust as a retired Navy dentist.

Galen Koch: [00:00:30] Great. What town do you live in, or, while you were in leadership, what town did you live in?

Mike Parker: [00:00:38] I started out in Gorham, and while I was attached to the Land Trust, I moved to Windham and just kept the same position in the Land Trust.

Galen Koch: [00:00:51] I’m making sure I’m asking these questions. Are your answers here what you want to say, or do they relate to these questions because they seem like maybe they’re not exactly –?

Mike Parker: [00:01:12] The question that they answer is numbered right here.

Galen Koch: [00:01:16] Okay. Can you tell me how you first heard about the Land Trust?

Mike Parker: [00:01:28] I heard about a land trust, and I was on the board of a very small outfit called Gorham Trails. I hadn’t really heard much about PRLT [Presumpscot Regional Land Trust] until I was approached by the president at the time, Richard Curtis. He asked me if I would like to be on the board. It sounded good, and I had time on my hands, so I signed up.

Galen Koch: [00:01:50] And when was that? What was the year?

Mike Parker: [00:01:52] That was 2014.

Galen Koch: [00:01:54] What was it about land trusts in general that made you want to be part of –?

Mike Parker: [00:02:03] In Gorham, I had been on the planning board for several years, so I was aware of the pressures on open space. I could see the need for land trust activity, and this sounded like a good opportunity.

Galen Koch: [00:02:21] So, you said when you joined – that was 2014, right? Did you join –?

Mike Parker: [00:02:31] No, actually not. I was wrong. I joined in 2011. I became president in 2014.

Galen Koch: [00:02:41] What was that? Oh, Siri is talking to us. You joined in 2011, and then when did you become part of the leadership?

Mike Parker: [00:02:54] Well, after joining, I didn’t know much about land trusts, and I joined the Lands Committee and became chairman of the Lands Committee. I listened to Richard Curtis, who had been president already for seven years, three times, say, yes, he was willing to continue on for another year because no volunteers had come forward to run against him or to succeed him. I decided that there was a need, but I sure didn’t have the expertise, so I took it upon myself to find out what I needed to know to become board president, eventually. I attended monthly meetings of the – let’s see. It’s called the –

Galen Koch: [00:03:54] Was it the Maine Association –?

Mike Parker: [00:03:57] Maine Land Trust Network. So, I attended those meetings. Those were run by the Maine Coast Heritage Trust, MCHT, and I became good friends with several members there. I also joined the board of Southern Maine Conservation Collaborative and, again, met people and listened to conversations that I needed to hear. I attended a workshop at the Casco Bay Estuary Partnership to broaden my view of how PRLT fit into the greater Portland picture. I attended, of course, annual Conservation Convention meetings in Topsham. By the end of three years, I thought I was probably qualified to run, and in 2014, became board president.

Galen Koch: [00:04:55] Wow, that’s so much dedication.

Mike Parker: [00:04:57] Well, the dedication is the guy who preceded me for ten years. [laughter]

Galen Koch: [00:05:03] What were some of the things that you learned in that training or in that time doing – it’s like research, almost.

Mike Parker: [00:05:14] I think it was more meeting people that would be helpful later, and many of them were. Also, learning the ins and outs of what a land trust has to do to keep itself going. There were some people who really stood out, and I’ll tell you, times were difficult. I was president for four years, and those four years had some thin spots. I was glad to have had the contacts that I made by attending these meetings.

Galen Koch: [00:05:56] That period when you were president, can you just sort of ground me in what was happening at the land trust then? Was that before Rachelle was –?

Mike Parker: [00:06:10] Oh, yes.

Galen Koch: [00:06:13] 2014 is when it started.

Mike Parker: [00:06:16] I became board president in 2014. Rachelle came in 2016, and there was a lot going on then. The role of board president changed a little bit, having someone running the whole show, but we worked well together. One of the contacts that I made – I need to look this up.

Galen Koch: [00:06:54] Yeah. Maybe number seven. Or number five.

Mike Parker: [00:07:08] Okay. Warren Whitney of Maine Coast Heritage Trust ran these meetings of the Land Trust Alliance, and he and I became good friends. He became so supportive of what we were doing. It just seemed to pile up. We were able to merge.

[RECORDING PAUSED]

Galen Koch: [00:07:39] That’s okay. So, Warren Whitney. You made all these connections then when you were doing some of the training.

Mike Parker: [00:07:47] People [who] really helped me out, whose acquaintance I made in the build-up, really helped me out were Warren Whitney, of course, and also Jessica Burton of Southern Maine Conservation Collaborative, and Marylee Dodge, who was a founding member of our board. She lived across the river from me, so I would spend a lot of time and downed a fair amount of tea in her kitchen, learning. I remember she wisely said, “Ask for money and get advice. Ask for advice, get money.” And those are really words to march by.

Galen Koch: [00:08:38] You have a little bit more here. Do you want to touch on Tamara and Priscilla, too?

Mike Parker: [00:08:44] After four years, we had merged two other land trusts with us, one of which had really struggled. The president of the board I had been on had died, and so pretty much that is Gorham Trails. We were asked by Maine Coast Heritage Trust to merge with that land trust and also with Windham Land Trust, which had been through a very expensive defense in court of a landowner who wanted to develop something that was under conservation easement. They had had a major struggle and were a small land trust, so the three of us all joined together under the financial assistance and nudging from Maine Coast Heritage Trust.

Galen Koch: [00:10:00] That makes sense. It’s sort of a “stronger together” scenario, it sounds like.

Mike Parker: [00:10:08] Yes.

Galen Koch: [00:10:11] And so what motivated you to stay involved at the land trust over time?

Mike Parker: [00:10:17] I had time on my hands, and I had the expertise, so there were things to do, and I did some of them.

Galen Koch: [00:10:25] That’s great. What were some of the highlights of your time as a leader of this organization?

Mike Parker: [00:10:34] Right before I took office, we had hired our first paid executive director. He was six months into his first year, and he had a clear purpose. What’s the word I want? He had an obligation to recruit his salary for the next year, and it soon became apparent to me, coming in after six months, that he was not doing that. He wasn’t going to be able to recruit his salary. So, we had to shuffle around. We were in the midst of finishing a major, major project called the Randall Orchard Project. It was a project that was funded under Land for Maine’s Future. It was a major challenge for a young land trust that we were. So, we assigned the new ED to finish up the consummation of the Randall project, which he did. I had to take over an empty office, which I had never done before. So, we got Tania Neuschafer back. She had been our office manager, and she came back to work on getting grants and to keep the office running, which she did very well and I wasn’t at all familiar with. That was a tough time, and even though PRLT had made a commitment to its purpose in a meeting, which I think somebody is going to talk about when they decided that they would accept the Randall project and they committed to our mission.

Galen Koch: [00:13:02] Even though that happened?

Mike Parker: [00:13:05] Well. This is why I have a script.

Galen Koch: [00:13:11] It gets complicated, or you’re losing the thread.

Mike Parker: [00:13:20] In spite of the fact that Randall was nearly consummated, bills kept rolling in, and, of course, we didn’t have the resources to meet them. That became a real challenge, as well as the challenge of not really having an ED after all.

Galen Koch: [00:13:53] And this is when it looks like Don – this is the Little Green Light story. Is that right? Does this go into that story?

Mike Parker: [00:14:06] Well, that was an important step that we took. We got an app that could keep track of our membership. We’d been doing that out of a notebook. But suddenly, to be without our first executive director and still having bills pouring in, my experience on the planning board in Gorham made me aware of something that they had developed, which was an open space fund, and I was able to recruit because this took place partly in Gorham – twenty thousand dollars from that fund. It was the first use of the open space money in Gorham, and it went for a good purpose. Standish also came across with five thousand to help defray those expenses. But there was another thing going on that really bothered me as board chairman. We never wrote a budget that had money behind it. We didn’t get money and decide how to spend it. We got an idea and then tried to recruit money to fund it. That seemed all backward to me. I decided to try my best to reverse that so that we had the money first and could then budget it for the project. To do that, I recruited Dick Randall, who had just consummated his land into conservation, myself, and three others to commit to a five-thousand-dollar donation. To my knowledge, that was the first time that we had ever written a budget with the funds to back it before we had the budget written, and it has always been so since then. That was a major turning point. Another thing that happened about that time was that Dick Randall didn’t stop with the expenses of his conservation project nor his five-thousand-dollar commitment; he also donated another $95,000, which the board put into a Stewardship Fund, none of which has ever been spent.

Galen Koch: [00:16:42] Wow.

Mike Parker: [00:16:44] And Tamara Pinard will be explaining how that worked for the land trust without ever being spent. It has now grown from $95,000 to $150,000, still sitting there and still working.

Galen Koch: [00:17:02] That’s great.

Mike Parker: [00:17:04] It’s an interesting story. I had no idea that that money was never spent, but it was working the whole time.

Galen Koch: [00:17:13] That’s a huge turnaround, too, from where you were with bills coming in and not being able to pay them and then having this huge donation.

Mike Parker: [00:17:24] It was. I can tell you that I had a tear in my eye when I got the phone call from one of the donors saying, “Yes, that was possible,” they would do that. That was quite a moment.

Galen Koch: [00:17:40] Yeah. That made it seem like things were actually going to work.

Mike Parker: [00:17:50] Before my time, the current board of a really struggling land trust in the early teens had sat around in chairs outside of their office, which was too hot, and made a commitment to take on the Randall project. For what the land trust was at that time, that was a monstrous step ahead and a real turning point. One of the board members at the time, Will Plumley, recalls how that was a major step up for the organization. Well, if that was a step toward making a commitment to our mission, then surely Dick Randall’s contribution put us on financial viability for the first time, and we’ve stayed there. The other change, of course, was that we were able to recruit funds and search for another ED. We found Rachelle, and that was another huge step forward. I had the pleasure of working a couple of years still as board chairman under her leadership. It was clear that PRLT was about to take off. I mentioned that one of the things I did to prepare to be a board president was to spend a lot of time with Maine Coast Heritage Trust, and in return, Maine Coast [Heritage Trust] really took an interest in PRLT. They saw two land trusts that were in some jeopardy. One was in serious jeopardy, and another one had to undergo a very expensive legal experience for which they hadn’t funded, of course, and another, who’s a board chairman, had passed away. So, there were holdings that were at risk of failing. Maine Coast [Heritage Trust] asked PRLT to merge with these two organizations, and we became much stronger as a result. They paid for the expenses of that, and they looked over our shoulder and helped us to do that. Then Rachelle came on about that time, so we were really geared to make ourselves bigger and stronger.

Galen Koch: [00:21:11] Yeah, that’s great. I didn’t know that Maine Coast Heritage Trust had a role, sort of a mentorship role, almost, in that.

Mike Parker: [00:21:20] Maine Coast Heritage Trust is a gem for the state of Maine because they’ve done that not just with us, but they’ve fostered so many small land trusts and brought them to life. And they track, as they did Gorham Trails, for instance – they knew Gorham Trails was in trouble and asked us to expand and include them. They are very much the father of land conservation in Maine, and they’ve done a marvelous job doing it.

Galen Koch: [00:21:54] What did the mergers mean for the organization? How did it change the community that you are a part of?

Mike Parker: [00:22:10] The process of that, I think, gave Rachelle the opportunity to tailor things as she would like to see them done, and it was done with guidance so that it was consistent with land trust standards. Maine Coast [Heritage Trust] had a hand in that, and we had lots of high-powered talent setting us up in this merger and taking over responsibilities. We had to do some research on other people’s – specifically Gorham Trails – holdings and see which were viable, which were properly done, and which weren’t properly done. So, they were hand-carrying us for so long. It was really a wonderful feeling to see that. And being one of the people – I need to find his name. Warren Whitney at Maine Coast Heritage Trust was the person who really was preeminent in that process. He’s now retired from Maine Coast [Heritage Trust], but I certainly have fond memories of all that he did for us and for me personally.

Galen Koch: [00:23:40] Yeah, that’s amazing that that was a connection. At the place where we are in terms of highlights, you’ve come to the point where Rachelle has joined. The land trusts have merged, so PRLT is now kind of in the form it is today.

Mike Parker: [00:24:02] Rachelle had the lead here and was remaking this enlarged land trust with her fingerprints on it, so it was just a wonderful coming together of lots of changes under good direction, fully funded. At the end of that, we also got a scholarship, while I was still board chairman, to apply for accreditation. I think Tamara Pinard, who’s going to talk later, will have some insight on how Dick Randall’s donation helped that process. But so much was in the making, and it was clear that PRLT was about to take off when the co-presidents succeeded me in 2018.

Galen Koch: [00:25:14] Who succeeded you then?

Mike Parker: [00:25:16] Tamara Pinard and Priscilla Payne. Priscilla had been on the board of Windham Land Trust, and Tamara works for – I’m not sure – works for a major land – I don’t have that straight.

Galen Koch: [00:25:43] That’s okay. I’m talking to Priscilla later today, and I’ll talk to Tamara tomorrow. I’ll get it all straight then. So they took over, and did you stay on the board at that point?

Mike Parker: [00:25:56] Not for very long. I had my time. I’ve stayed active. I found being on the advisory board was just right because someone would answer the phone if I called, and I could run things by them that I thought might be useful and some were, and some weren’t. I did keep my hands in the mix after I was off the board. The advisory board is a nice position; I kind of like that.

Galen Koch: [00:26:29] Sweet spot. Can you talk about the ways in which, during your time in a leadership position, or also generally, how the land trust brings value to the community that it serves? What’s the value, in your opinion?

Mike Parker: [00:26:49] That’s not my forte. It was fun to watch how first Westbrook – let’s go back a little more. It started out as Gorham Land Trust, and then it became Presumpscot Regional Land Trust, or it became Sebago Lake Gorham Land Trust, and it worked its way up starting in the ’90s. It was fun to watch. Gorham had a little bit of a response to this, but the first town to really grab on to what we were doing was Westbrook. Westbrook gave us our office space. Our office, which we had from the beginning, was a historic building in Gorham that the town owned and they let us use, and we rented the upstairs. The poor building was falling apart under us. We steered the town into selling that to someone who had historically renovated it, and it’s now a dental office and a beautiful building. But we lost our home, and Westbrook quickly jumped in and said, “We have office space; you can stay with us.” And that’s where we’ve been since. I’ll tell you a little story later about giving a public tour of the first parcel that we conserved in Westbrook. I was leading – this is down on Mill Brook – and I was leading a group for the first time to see this parcel and some trails that went down near where the fish run. We would soon find out – we were just learning about the fish run, but this particular parcel got us down to where you can see the fish. And this guy came up to me and handed me a three-by-five card, and it said, “I have three thousand feet of frontage on the Mill Brook, and I would like to conserve it.” His name was Ralph Hatt. He lived nearby, and he knew more about Mill Brook than I ever would, so I conceded the leadership of this walk to him. We eventually did acquire his property. It’s beautiful. That was one of many that Westbrook saw, liked, and facilitated more of, and they really bought into what we were doing. More recently, Windham has caught on, and we’ve had big projects going in Windham. Windham was pretty reluctant; they weren’t enthusiastic about that, and we didn’t have many projects going in Windham. But we spent a lot of time during and right after my tenure expanding our properties in Westbrook, and that’s been a nice relationship. But Westbrook got enthused and realized that they needed to do something to save open space while it was still open. Windham has now gotten that bug, and I think Gorham is not far behind. It’s good to see that that is catching on and that the organization is really enormously popular and well-supported in the five towns that we serve.

Galen Koch: [00:31:16] Yeah, and it seems like you’ve seen that change a lot over the time that you have been part of the organization.

Mike Parker: [00:31:27] When Don established Little Green Light as a means of keeping track of people, we couldn’t have grown our membership without something like that to keep track of who does what. In getting ready for this interview, part of the means for tracking down what happened and when was looking back to see when donations were made by whom. It continues to be a really valuable part of our operation is this Little Green Light.

Galen Koch: [00:32:08] And that’s keeping track of membership, donations, volunteers, and all that sort of thing?

Mike Parker: [00:32:15] Membership and donations primarily.

Galen Koch: [00:32:17] Okay, that’s great. I’m just looking at the things that you’ve skipped, but I think you’ve talked about what sort of your proudest moments were because that’s a little bit of a redundant question.

Mike Parker: [00:32:33] Little follow on to the walk on Mill Brook – Ralph Hatt and two of his buddies at the same age put on a video called “Three Boys and a Brook,” which turned out to be a great explanation by him of why people donate land for conservation. It was really fun to do. And they did it up really well.

Galen Koch: [00:33:09] Very fun. As someone who’s been involved in the organization, have you seen more people be interested in conserving land?

Mike Parker: [00:33:23] They’re coming out of the woodwork. They come to us much more than we come to them now, and that wasn’t the case. Actually, the first parcel, the one we were going for a walk on, had been donated to us by a developer, and that was very uncommon. They had to make some open space as part of the contracts for a building permit for a subdivision. This one wanted to give it to the land trust for our management and not theirs. That was a first for me; I hadn’t seen that happen before because usually, they’re very protective about that, and it’ll be open only to the occupants of the buildings in the subdivision. But this was different; he came to us, and he did one other two, so he played a significant part in the Mill Brook acquisitions. We’ve got a network of them connected by trails, so you can really do some serious hiking on Mill Brook.

Galen Koch: [00:34:35] That’s great.

Mike Parker: [00:34:36] Of course, the fish are a big attraction.

Galen Koch: [00:34:41] Yeah, that’s great. Unless you had final stories or thoughts that you want to share.

Mike Parker: [00:34:48] I’ve shared my final story.

Galen Koch: [00:34:50] That’s it.

Mike Parker: [00:34:52] No, that was it.

Galen Koch: [00:34:54] That was great. I love that. That’s wonderful. Thank you so much.

[RECORDING PAUSED]

Mike Parker: [00:34:58] One of the roles that I have played in being off the board is to recruit board members. I recruited the town manager that I had worked with while we were living in Gorham Quarters. I recruited another who was new in town and invited him to be on the Lands Committee with me, and he came on the board. One of the most gratifying parts of being off the board is to find replacements and see how well they are doing and keeping the ball rolling.

Galen Koch: [00:35:52] It seems like there’s a lot to be proud of, too. The ball is rolling.

Mike Parker: [00:35:57] Yeah, it sure is.