BATH — Longtime economic and community development director Al Smith retired this month after 17 years spent largely in his office at Bath City Hall.

During his tenure, Smith, of Bath, secured millions of dollars in grant money for the city, enabling the construction of such projects as Wing Farm Parkway and the Elmhurst Inc. facility.

The day after Smith left City Hall in his official capacity for the last time, City Council chairman David Sinclair read from a proclamation that praised Smith as an “unsung hero … who (poured) his heart and soul into making Bath a better place to live.”

The council, along with a room full of family and others, stood and applauded as Smith stood, overwhelmed.

Smith began his career in Bangor and joined the Bath economic and community development staff in 1995, after years of securing Community Block Development grants for 36 towns across the state, according the proclamation.

In the ensuing 17 years, he secured federal and state grants to improve Bath’s infrastructure, renovate the city’s housing stock, address historic preservation and energy conservation issues.

The list of Smith’s volunteer activities ranges from the local soup kitchen and National Coalition for Cooperative Housing to serving as selectman in Richmond, as a founding member of the Maine Clean Election Coalition and initiating the first Democratic Youth Group after President John F. Kennedy was shot, according to the proclamation.

In 2006, Smith was honored with the Maine Department of Economic and Community Development’s Governor’s Award, acknowledging his longtime efforts on behalf of many Maine communities.

But Smith told The Times Record that the CDBG grant money he’d secured actually resulted from “a community effort.”

“They’re not necessarily my successes,” he said at the time. “Bath is special in a lot of ways. I have a lot of support in this job, by staff and community groups.”

Smith said his job involved “finding the community needs and prioritizing them, meeting with the residents, getting people involved and accomplishing the project … that’s what I like about community development.”

“Al’s brought in literally millions of dollars in grant money to the city of Bath over the years, but more importantly he’s been a pleasure to work with,” City Manager Bill Giroux told The Times Record recently. “He’s done many, many things for the community.”

That effort — as well as Smith’s “integrity and professionalism, compassion and humor” — has not gone unnoticed. As noted in the city’s proclamation, “Al has spent more time at City Hall than most of the city of Bath combined and has been found sleeping on his desk, on the floor, on the couch in the employee lounge, under his desk and in places that we don’t even know about.”

But he also became well known to those he worked with, and Sinclair noted Smith’s love of music and dancing, “and making people smile and advising them to ‘Do what you can during the day, but always dance the night away.’”

“Be it proclaimed that, ‘singing the blues,’ we send him off with our warmest wishes and heartfelt gratitude,” the proclamation concludes, “and our sincere hope that Al will be able to fulfill his lifelong dream of singing and dancing across the continent of Africa.”

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