When not working from her desk at the Fort Kent Municipal Building, Administrative Assistant for the Office of Planning and Economic Development Cindy Bouley can often be found sitting behind a table selling snacks at her eighth-grade son Ethan’s Valley Rivers Middle School or Aroostook Youth Basketball League games.
Bouley, 48, and her husband Carl attend all of Ethan’s sporting events, which include both basketball and soccer. As the Valley Rivers Middle School Booster Club secretary, and an AYBL volunteer, Cindy often takes charge of the food-selling fund-raising responsibilities.
Married in 1995, Carl and Cindy met while both students at Fort Kent Community High School. Cindy worked a part-time gig pumping gas for her uncle Phil Voisine, who owned Voisine’s Exxon service station on Market Street at the time.
It wasn’t until Carl and Cindy attended Northern Maine Community College together after high school that they began dating.
The couple moved to Connecticut where Carl worked carpentry while Cindy took a position as an assistant manager at a retail store.
The cost of real estate in Connecticut compared to the lower mortgage rates in northern Maine, combined with the Bouley’s desire to start a family inspired them to return to the St. John Valley.
“I was always drawn back to this area — it’s home,” Cindy said. “We thought we’d move back home and raise our kids here and that’s what we did.”
Cindy attributes the longevity of her and Carl’s marriage to a simple and very special fact:
“We were friends first,” she said.
A temp agency application led to Cindy being hired by the Fort Kent Water Department in 1997. She has worked for the town ever since, joining the Administrative Department in 2005, where she writes simple grants and administers grants written by Planning Department Director Steve Pelletier. She also takes care of environmental reviews, property reviews and puts together the annual town report.
Cindy attends all of the planning board and zoning board meetings and performs secretarial work for some of the town department heads. Multi-tasking would be the definitive adjective for her position. However, she enjoys the excitement and challenges of her working at the town office.
“You never know what the day is going to bring,” Bouley said. “It depends on what we need, on what we’re doing over here.”
Bouley holds a second job as a bail commissioner in the town. At all hours of the night she may be called out to the police station to set bail for a person who has been arrested.
“It’s sad because I usually meet people not on their best days. It’s not their best time,” she said. “I’m just there to make sure they show up to court.”
Cindy is also an animal lover who has rescued the family pets: dogs Roxie and Nico, a neglected Maltese, and Minew, a black and white cat who was formerly a stray.
Cindy finds relaxation in down-to-earth activities, literally. She enjoys working barefoot in her garden.
“It’s nice to see the fruits of your labor. I enjoy watching it grow and being out there. And as crazy as this sounds, I don’t wear shoes in my garden because I like the feel of my feet in the dirt.”
There she grows a multitude of organic vegetables, fruits and flowers including string beans, onions, carrots, tomatoes, green peppers, turnips, corn, lettuce, spinach, summer savory, sunflowers, zucchini, cucumbers, blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, and kiwi trees. She cans and freezes some of the harvest, but gives most to friends and family.
Her childhood family include parents Richard and Leeta Pelletier, and sister Susie. Cindy said she enjoyed growing up in Fort Kent while her father worked at the Fraser paper mill (now Twin Rivers Paper). “I used to read and go skiing. In the summertime I was at the swimming pool here in town. I’d go out to my grandparents’ camp on Long Lake on the weekends,” she said.
Nowadays Cindy, Carl and Ethan travel biannually to Virginia and North Carolina during the summer to visit extended relatives. However, despite a busy life, Cindy most enjoys time spent at home caring for her husband and son.
“I like to stay busy but when I’m home, I am home,” she said.
