ANDERSON — After four years as mayor, 29 years as a police officer and 10 years on the County Council, Kevin Smith will leave Anderson and take a job as CEO of the Clinton County Chamber of Commerce and director of Clinton County Economic Development.
Smith, who served as Anderson mayor from 2004 to 2007, will start in the Frankfort office Jan. 1.
“It’s a great opportunity,” he said. “Clinton County, quite frankly, is a very progressive community in economic development. They have a very well established industrial park, which houses four or five large national or international companies.
“They have embraced being aggressive and moving out front in attempting to recruit new business to their county.”
Smith will deal with site selectors and “moving the community forward as far as industry in concerned,” said Clinton County Chamber of Commerce Assistant Director Shan Sheridan.
He will serve as the point person for industries looking to come into the community and as liaison between the chamber and government entities.
“It’s a certainly multifaceted job,” Sheridan said. “The main goal is to be the driver or the catalyst for economic development.”
Smith said he applied for the open position and went through a lengthy interview process before being offered the job. He said efforts he made as Anderson mayor were helpful in preparing him for an economic development position, such as initiating economic development trips to Asia and dealing with infrastructure issues.
“As mayor, my emphasis was economic development with that broad range of activities that have to occur to make your city attractive to be able to receive those things,” he said. “I like to say there was a wide array of economic development efforts that Anderson had taken, and I will enjoy being able to work with that past experience and work with (Clinton County’s) private sector and public sector to try to do what we did in Anderson.”
Sheridan said Smith’s time as mayor showed he was a leader and had an understanding of economics.
“Anytime you have someone in political office, you gain a pretty good perspective of the inward working of how economics play out in the community,” Sheridan said. “Someone who has that experience and has been able to work through negotiations and have strong vision, those are all traits of a leader that certainly I would think Kevin possesses and would bring to our community.”
Smith said his jobs as a police officer, council member and mayor have rounded him to be ready for his next job.
“All these things I think have provided a wealth of life experience for me,” he said. “It’s time to move on and apply an area that I really love, which is economic development.”
Contact Aleasha Sandley: 640-4805, aleasha.sandley@heraldbulletin.com.
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