James E. Huber, a four-term Lancaster County commissioner and longtime community activist, died Monday. He was 75.

Huber was pronounced dead at Lancaster General Hospital of heart disease, according to county Coroner Dr. Stephen Diamantoni.

"He was a true Lancaster Countian from start to finish," said Greg Sahd, chairman of the Lancaster County Republican Committee. "And he left this world a better place for all of us."

On Monday, those who knew and worked with Huber, a Republican who lived in Manor Township, remembered him in many ways.

But everyone heralded him as one of the founders of the county's farmland preservation program.

"He started it," Commissioner Scott Martin said. "He got the ball rolling, and look what that program is today. Where would farmland preservation in Lancaster County be without Jim Huber?" Martin ordered all flags at county buildings to be flown at half-staff until the end of the week.

Born in Lititz in 1935, Huber, who was married and the father of three children, was a restaurateur through the 1960s and 1970s.

He often reminded folks he was manager of Lancaster County's first McDonald's, which opened in 1962 in the Wheatland Shopping Center off Route 462.

From 1969 through 1980, Huber was a Manor Township supervisor, serving as chairman in 1977-80.

In 1979, Huber was elected to his first term as a county commissioner. He was elected three more times, ending his career at the Lancaster County Courthouse 16 years later.

"That the people thought enough of him to elect him four times speaks volumes about his leadership," Sahd said.

Former county commissioner Robert Boyer, who served alongside Huber in 1980-88, remembers the two Republicans started out with a common concern for Lancaster County's fast-paced growth. He said they were worried about how that growth might impact the future of farming here.

"It just seemed like development was going on everywhere and without any planning," Boyer said.

In 1980, the county commissioners created the nine-member Agricultural Preserve Board to come up with ways to protect farming in the county.

Three years later, the board became a county department and began buying development rights to farms.

Since then, the board has preserved nearly 770 farms on more than 65,000 acres.

"The ag preserve board certainly is something Jim was always proud of," said Brad Fischer, a Democrat who switched his party allegiance to Republican and served as county commissioner alongside Huber from 1984 to 1996.

Fischer remembered Huber as someone who always worked with Lancaster County's best interests in mind.

"We didn't always agree on everything, but his integrity and motivations could never be questioned," Fischer said. "Whatever he did, he believed it was what was best for the county."

A controversial issue Fischer and Huber agreed on was creating the Lancaster County Solid Waste Management Authority in the mid-1980s and building the county's trash-to-steam plant in Conoy Township.

"We knew we had to move past just operating the local dump," Fischer said. "We had to get into recycling and operating an incinerator and managing waste from a broader perspective."

Fischer recalled there was stiff opposition to the incinerator, which residents feared would spew ash all over the surrounding landscape.

Today, the incinerator is heralded as an environmental asset that operates cleanly, saves landfill space and generates electricity.

One of Huber's gifts as a leader, according to Fischer, was his ability to keep his finger on the pulse of county residents.

He did that by attending all sorts of community events — fairs, parades and municipal meetings.

"I'd see him everywhere," Fischer said.

Martin remembers his father, former East Hempfield Township police Officer Bob Martin, taking Huber along on patrols in the early 1980s because Huber wanted an up-close look at police work.

"He was the most grassroots politician I've ever known," Commissioner Martin said.

In 1984, when motorists in the Intercourse area complained about the number of buggies on Route 340 that were holding up traffic because they wouldn't move to the shoulders, Huber rode in a buggy from Smoketown to Intercourse to understand what buggy drivers experienced.

Huber discovered during the trip that the shoulders in many areas were in bad shape and prevented buggies from safely traveling on them. He then lobbied PennDOT to fix the problem.

"It was an eye-opening experience for me," Huber said after his ride.

Huber continued his grassroots advocacy long after he left county government in 1996 — most notably as a leader of the anti-Wal-Mart citizens' group, Friends Against Irresponsible Development.

For 12 years, the group staunchly opposed a proposal to build a Wal-Mart near Huber's home on South Centerville Road in Manor Township.

Last year, Wal-Mart announced it had dropped plans to build a store there.

In 2006, Huber was the top vote-getter in the November general election, winning one of 11 seats on a Home Rule Study Commission assigned to weigh the merits of changing the county's form of government to home rule.

Huber opposed such a change, claiming the existing government structure worked fine. He said it just needed the right people to make it function properly.

Voters apparently agreed with Huber's position, rejecting a proposed home-rule charter by a nearly 2-1 margin in 2008.

"Jim Huber believed in the form of county government in which he served and he fought to preserve it," Sahd said.

preilly@lnpnews.com