WINDHAM — Dave Nadeau is the new chairperson of the Windham Town Council, his second time in that role. He is in his third term as at-large council representative and held the East District seat from 2011-2017. He succeeds Councilor Jarrod Maxfield as the council’s leader.

Nadeau spoke with the Lakes Region Weekly last week about his goals for the town, his priority issues and how the council has changed in recent years. Excerpts from that conversation appear below.

Q: What are your priorities for the town over the next year?

A: I want to make sure we move things forward. In the coming year, we’ve made great strides bringing in Portland Water District and Maine DOT for two different big projects. And I want to make sure we move them forward. But my main goal would be to try and make us more of a visionary and not have tunnel vision.

Q: Can you expand on that – visionary versus tunnel vision?

A: As a Town Council, we should not be looking at just this year. That’s tunnel vision. We should be visionaries and looking five or 10 years into the future.

Q. It’s been a tumultuous couple of years for the council. How has the mood and/or productivity changed in recent years and what would you like to see moving forward?

A: The last time I served as chair, there was a whole different attitude with the council. It was “we can’t raise taxes,” “we have to keep taxes totally low.” … That is the wrong process. And finally, we’ve got that process changed. So that’s what’s there (in the budget), stays there. We look at it and we deal with it. And past councils haven’t done that and that was a challenge.

In the past, there (was) just a whole totally different attitude about moving the town forward and what we have to do to achieve that. This whole council seems to be in lockstep about how we do it and how we do it being financially responsible.

Q: You worked on the comprehensive plan in the early 2000s and the 2017 update and served 10 years on the Planning Board. Growth management was and remains an important topic of residents. What is left to tackle?

A: I think one of the biggest hurdles in Windham is that everybody looks at Windham as a farm community … I think the hardest part to look at is, are you rural? … So, I think one of the bigger questions at some point in the future is, how do we keep what we have but still allow growth which is going to come?

Q: What are some of the town’s major achievements in the last 20 years?

A: I’d say a big achievement is especially with the last comprehensive plan. We put in place a Long-Term Planning Committee that has made a major difference in implementing the comprehensive plan.

Q: Any other projects that residents should be aware of?

A. One of my head goals has always been the financing of the town and how do we do that (through bond issues) … Most people have no idea what you do or how you’re trying to do it. A great example was COVID. We had big, big, big cutbacks this year. Our finances look excellent and we did that without raising taxes and that was through nothing but long-term planning.

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