 Hi, this is the Portland Media Center Civic IQ project and I am Greg Kessich and I'm meeting with Justin Costa who is a candidate for mayor, former city councilor and former school board member and running for mayor this year. So thank you Justin. Yeah, good to see you again, Greg. Good to see you. So can you tell us a little bit, what do we need to know about you? Tell us about your background, your life here in town. Yeah, well, I find myself in the interesting position talking to people of being, you know, if I win, I'll be the youngest mayor by a bid and also the one with the most experience in municipal government and, you know, I, as we were reminiscing about off camera, you know, I started doing this work when I was really young. I got elected to the Portland School Board in 2008 when I was 25 years old, spent six years on the school board there working with some really phenomenal people who made me kind of fall in love with the business of local government and how it works. And you know, so Kate Snyder, Peter Edmonton, a lot of people who continue to be involved in the community. And I spent six years on the board there, was the finance chair for a few years. And then in 2014, when Gerald Eamonn retired, I ran from city council, got elected to represent District 4 and spent six years on the city council where I got to work on a whole variety of issues. I mean, everything from minimum wage to asylum seekers during the all the page years as you probably recall to housing safety projects and economic development and workforce training programs and all sorts of things. And you know, I just really found that I love the work. I won't tell you that 2020 was the most familiar to be a government. But overall, it was an incredibly rewarding experience and you know, I think that right now it feels to me that the city doesn't have a lot of clear vision and direction and a lot of policy areas. And I think that I have something offered to the conversation and to the community. Great. Well, I'd like to get into those. Can you tell us a little bit about your life outside of government? Yeah, sure. So I, depending on your definition, I am or am not a mainer. But I grew up in Brunswick and graduated from Brunswick High School in 2002. I went off to Wesleyan University in Connecticut, spent four great years there and then ended up moving back to Maine and got progressively sort of more politically involved and eventually decided that I wanted to run myself for office and you know, did that of course. My wife and I met in, my now wife and I met in 2017. So we've been together a few years. We had a son in September of 21, so he just had his second birthday this past week and we live over in sort of the Oakdale, Libbytown area near the Kiwanis Pool now and we're loving every minute of living in Portland. So you grew up in the area, what are your earliest memories of Portland? What was the city like? You know, I mean I remember probably when I was like that 10 to 13 age, I mean coming down for pirate schemes and stuff and it was a very different town back then. You know, it wasn't a major tourist destination, it had a reputation for being kind of a gritty old town you know and it's changed dramatically obviously since then. The population's gotten younger, we've seen you know more and more interest in people coming to Portland, a recognition of all the fantastic things that there are about our quality of life here, but we've also kind of seen the problems that come with that and pressure on the housing markets, gentrification, all of those sorts of things, but yeah. So maybe looking forward, if you could kind of paint me a picture of what the city would be like in 10 years, that would be, you know, your third term as mayor, the third on the loud term. Right. No, I think that... Is that... Is that... It's only two terms? Only two. Something that hasn't been tested so far in our system, nobody's tried to go for more than one or more than successfully anyway, but anyway I'm giving you a shot of the future the way you see it. You know, what I see is, and I saw this from my first days in government, you know, I was part of the school board during the worst years as the recession hit and expanded and all of those sorts of things. There's this real strength of community that really is unique and you find people who are so concerned about the community as a whole. And that was really inspiring, especially to me as a young person. And I think deep down that sense of community is still there. It's the thing that makes so many people care about the disadvantage, be it asylum seekers or our homeless population or whoever, that there really is this deep sense of community. I think what's happened in our politics in the last five to six years, maybe a little bit longer, is that that sense of community is getting lost. And what I would love to see going forward is that we get back to that. And you know, if we can take a step back and we really listen to one another, we'll see that the issues that everyone claims are important to them are such a broad object of consensus. You know, if you listen to the Democratic Socialists and you listen to the Chamber of Commerce, both of them are going to spend a lot of time talking about affordability of housing. They're going to talk about mass transportation. They're going to talk about so many of the same things, even if they think that the issue should be approached in a different way. And what I would love to do is see us get back to a place where we can bring all of those viewpoints back together to actually just work on the issues in a more collaborative kind of way. Because I do think that there is this really deep sense of community and purpose in Portland. And I don't think our politics has been as good as that community for the last few years. So what should we be doing now to achieve that vision? You know, I think it starts with affordability. I mean, that's the linchpin, I think, of everything right now. And I think what we really have to do is we really we just need leadership that knows how to move beyond sort of these hot button or these big picture kind of things. Like everyone says, affordable housing, but what are we doing about that? How does that translate into policy? And I think the first step for leadership is to really address that in specific. And, you know, I think there's a whole variety of ways that we can go about that. There's specific zoning reforms that would make it easier for nonprofits to come back into the market here and to start adding more housing in Portland, which is the only long term solution of the issues that we're facing. I think it starts there. And then I think it also extends into other issues. You know, I think the vast majority of Portlanders care a lot about homelessness and the safety of our parks and public spaces. The vast majority of Portlanders really care about what has happened in our school department in the last few years and wants to see the school succeed. But it's a slow process. I think of rebuilding trust amongst the institutions and the political leaders. And, you know, I think we do have to be honest that a big portion of it is our sort of shared trauma, if you will, coming out of the pandemic. You know, I think we have to acknowledge that that strained everyone and it's going to take time to rebuild some some real bonds of trust and community. One more processing question and then we can get into some specific ideas about the subjects you just raised. But as you know, it's a new position, fairly new in since 2011. There's still a lot of controversy about what the mayor's duties are, what they should be. We just went through a charter review process and then an unsuccessful referendum to change the position. But in your sense, obviously, you were running for this because you think the position makes a difference. But how does a mayor influence events in policy in Portland? Yeah, I mean, I think it's interesting because this is a relatively new position. This will be the fourth election under the current system that we've had. The thing that we haven't tried yet as a community is actually just electing someone that came up through municipal government to lead the municipal government. And I think, you know, I don't mean to be flippant about it, but some of the difficulties I think we've seen with each elected mayor so far relate to the fact that the legislature is different, the school department is different. And we really need someone that knows what it's like to operate within City Hall and knows how to get things done. I think the real power of the mayor, as distinct from a city counselor, is that you have the time to work on all of those kind of things. So there are bigger picture kind of things that as a community, we can position the city government to get involved in. So how we coordinate between the public schools, for example, and entities that are not government proper, but childcare providers. And early afterschool programs, summer programs, public transportation. A whole variety of things like that where it's not all about hard power, if you will, it's about soft power. It's about knowing how to reach out to all the different entities to walk in the door, frankly, on day one and have relationships with the people and say, I think we actually share interests here. How is it that we can partner with other groups that can help us fill some needs in the community? What is it that the city can be doing better to support efforts of others or to start new efforts ourselves and internally within City Hall? A lot of it is about just understanding what the work of staff really is and recognizing that the vast majority of staff in City Hall are not there because of the city council, you know, a small part of what the lawyers in City Hall do is respond to policy requests or research ideas from the council. But a lot of it is just enforcing the laws that are on the books, making sure that people who are renting out apartment units are following life safety codes and that they're pursuing when they're not following the codes and stuff like that. And it's amazing, I think in my experience, how much more effective people are when they have those relationships because I can look at the city staff and say, you know that I've gone to the bath for you in the past. You know that I look out for your well-being and I care about it. And if you're not successful and if you're not happy and if you're not treated appropriately as an employee, then you're not going to stick around for very long. And ultimately, that really harms everything that City Hall is trying to do. So what does the mayor do all day? You know, they say, like, how do you foster those relationships? I think, you know, part of the beauty of the position is that it's for each person to sort of figure out what the best way to use that timeness. I mean, and I would hesitate to give a super specific answer before I'm back in there and really get a chance to go through. But you've seen three very different people tackle the job in different ways. And I wonder if there's anything you saw there that you'd like to emulate or is there anything that you're going to try to avoid? Well, I think the number one thing is having a good relationship with the manager, having a very good and sort of healthy professional relationship with the manager. And certainly, you know, Danielle was my city attorney for years. I knew her for years before that because I represented her, among other things. Knock on her door as a candidate and that sort of thing. But it all really starts there. And I think what we've seen in broad strokes is probably the first mayor, Mayor Brennan, probably was the victim in my view of what happens when you have a mayor, but a manager that the council perceives as kind of weak and how that can get that relationship out of balance to where it feels to the other elected officials that the mayor is overstepping their bounds and trying to run the show. I think under Mayor Strindling, we kind of had the opposite. I think you had a mayor that was put with a city manager who was a very strong city manager and wants to put his imprint on programs and stuff and since they didn't have the trust, they didn't get very far in that relationship. I think Kate, unfortunately, has sort of been the victim of just this crazy world that's happened basically since she was elected. She had about four months before the pandemic hit. And so it's hard to believe that. So it's hard to glean too much from from that. But I think, you know, again, it's it's all about that relationship. That's where it starts, because if you're trying to look at it from a very formal, like legalistic kind of way, you're just not going to get very far. You know, it's that relationship where the mayor can go in and say, you know, Danielle, I heard about this situation that happened and this is how we're interpreting this set of rules or regulations. And this seems like a result that doesn't really make sense to me. Now, I know this is in your purview, but can we just think about this and tell me if you think these concerns are valid? That's, you know, the soft power kind of thing of just the mayors there to look out for the community, pay attention to a certain set of interests and stuff like that, but also respect the boundaries of where the mayor's position ends and the city manager's position starts. But that doesn't mean it has to be adversarial. And I think that's really the key to it is viewing that as a working partnership. And when the two do get on the same page, I think City Hall and the city at large will be in a much better position than it's been for some time. What do you consider the biggest issues facing the city right now, the challenges that you think are the most significant? Three big issues facing the city above all else, I think. There's the affordable housing crisis. There's the homelessness crisis. And there's what's happening with our public schools right now. I think a big part of the reason that I decided to run for office again is that I have not seen a lot of vision or proactive leadership on any of those issues. And that's that's been very frustrating to watch from the outside because I think everyone talks about these issues. You're never going to have anyone come in and say, affordable housing, what do you want to talk about? Like everyone understands that. But in the three years that I've been out of government right now, we've seen no significant zoning proposals. We've seen no significant proposals for what we do with the housing trust fund that we use to support and fund development of affordable housing, not significant programmatic changes or funding changes or just anything to really move the needle on those sorts of things. And this is despite the fact that if we look at the number of proposals that are sort of in the roughly defined affordable housing pipeline, if you will, they've been plummeting the last three years and we still don't see concrete policy solutions to address those things. I think the similar a similar dynamic is playing out when it comes to homelessness. Let's start with the housing. Yeah, sure. What are some of the policy initiatives that could make a big difference? Yeah, so I mean, I think the first thing is that we really just have to focus on what can we do quickly? We have to move things along right now so that we can start getting more viable, affordable projects into the pipeline. We don't want to have this big far reaching academic conversation about how to rewrite the entirety of zoning law and stuff. Like we want to do things that are going to have a meaningful impact. So what does that mean? Well, if you talk to the sort of affordable housing developers in that space, the Vesta housings, community housing, Maine, the Zanton companies, you know, I mean, this is not that big of a place. Like everyone knows each other, you know? If you talk to folks like that, what they need fundamentally is they need to be able to get more units on the same amount of light, a big part of how they finance their projects is through competitive tax credits, through Maine State Housing Authority, to some extent from federal government programs. Generally, these things are competitive. And so what happens is if you have to purchase land to build a project in Portland and someone else is doing it in Sanford or DUSTA or anywhere else, you're just already behind the eight ball because it's so much cheaper to get land there. And so the ask at a high level is very simple. So how do you do that? And sort of the menu of options that have been out there that I thought the city was about to address when I was leaving the council was just very simple things to make that possible so you can let people build higher, you can let them build closer to the road. If they are near bus lines, you could waive parking requirements, you know, things like that, that let them get more units onto the same amount of land so that the cost per unit comes down, that makes them more competitive, more likely to succeed and get the financing so that the project actually happens. So what I would suggest doing in very concrete terms is starting with all of those things, but to break sort of the political log jam that's been there for the last decade or so, instead of giving those zoning reforms as of right and opening it up to anyone that wants to build, let's just give them as bonuses and tie them explicitly to affordability restrictions and say, so, all right, we don't need to have a whole conversation about can anyone build to five stories or six stories or wherever we end up sending the bar, say, if you agree to affordability restrictions, we'll let you build higher than you otherwise would do, we'll let you build closer to the road, we'll give you reduced parking requirements. That's the fastest way to get reform done, that will start to open up opportunities to get more affordable housing coming back onto the market in Portland. The second piece that I would suggest to probably make that even easier and more palatable is let's start with the geographic areas that have been the subject of the most conversation over the last decade. So let's start with the priority corridors by which we mean the Brighton Avenue corridor going out all the way to Westbrook, the Forest Avenue corridor and some of the area around Morales Corridor, start there, say, this is where there's been development interest. We know what people need. We know specifically how to do that. So let's make it happen and then we learn from that. And then we can have the longer term, broader conversations that we know will need to happen if people want to broaden those reforms to a wider geographic area or whatever it is. But starting there, I think, is a very good way to just get something happening so that we can start to make progress. So are you saying that these changes should be made independent of the recode effort, zoning reform effort? Yeah, I mean, I think you have to work, obviously, with the planning staff to make it happen, but there's nothing that I've just suggested that would be remotely surprising to them. I mean, I think that's part of the thing. You can walk in. You know, I don't know how many viewers are, you know, land use wonks. But if you go into the planning departments, I want to talk about heights. I want to talk about building setbacks. I want to talk about parking requirements. Everyone knows what you're talking about immediately. It's just how do you want to set the number? And so I mean, I would suggest that affordable housing is priority one for all of the recode and I don't think that's a controversial provision. There's, I suppose, a question about whether the current staff proposals can happen in tandem with that or not. And I think at this point, it's just premature to say whether we know that or not. But the key is if that is an object of consensus, then I think that's an open conversation. My hunch is that that's the type of proposal since it's more widespread and has far reaching impacts on a ton of neighborhoods, that that's something people are going to want to talk about for a lot longer. And if that's the case, then I think that we should move what we can move first to take a crack at the affordable housing problem and make sure that that's still happening, even as we queue up that broader long term conversation. So one of the things that makes housing more affordable is dense walkable neighborhoods where people can don't need a car to get to work or get to school or stores and services where the access to public transportation makes sense and a strange irony of Portland is that the dense walkable neighborhoods are so desirable that they have become wealthy neighborhoods where the housing is the least affordable in the city. And Monjoy Hill and the West End are two examples. And in order to to create that kind of environment in other parts of the city would require adding density in areas where people have become used to single family houses with big yards. How do you get there? How do you get people to accept the notion that change is good and that the city could look different in the future? Yeah, I mean, I think it starts with building more robust outreach to some of the neighborhoods. But I also think the neighborhoods used to represent. Yeah. And I think a huge, huge portion of it is don't bite off more than we can chew. We've seen this happen over and over. And it's it's not that the policy ideas are bad or don't make sense, but it's so easy to say we want to reform all of the residential zones. And that just creates an environment where there's so many interests and so many concerns that it's difficult to just bring some piece of it to conclusion and start chipping away and making reforms. So I mean, sort of what I've suggested in conversation to a lot of folks in the area is I think it's really important to start in areas where there actually has been development interests. You know, so, for example, I mean, I used to represent East Erie on the school board and on the council. And I'll just say I don't mean to sound flippant, but I never had a developer come and say like, oh, yeah, that part of Washington app. That's where I'm really looking to to build the development. And so I think with sort of smart political leadership, I hate to use the term in that context, but you just say we don't have to do the same thing every place like we are smart enough to carve that out and let's then have the debate around the areas where we think that there is the highest likelihood of succeeding in adding density to the Washington Avenue corridor is different than than forest and forest and bright and absolutely. And I think that you start there and then you learn from it. You know, it wasn't that long ago that there were zoning reforms on Monjoy Hill, right? And the idea was you can't build what's there right now. If you want to build a triple tech or isn't that what everyone says looks great and fits in with the neighborhood? Well, you couldn't do that on the zone. So the theory was we're going to open this up and more of that kind of development will happen. I think most people in the public think that in reality, what happened is the market dictated a push towards high end luxury condoms and that that's a far, far too great a percentage of the development that we've seen on Monjoy Hill in the last few years. So that kind of thing is a legitimate concern. And the point is that the broader we make these zoning reforms, the longer it's going to take to address all of those legitimate concerns. And I think we've been sort of on that bandwagon for far too long. I think we just need to start making real concrete progress. And that starts by doing in a more limited way. And so, you know, again, I see forest right in the morals corner area. Those kind of places are those are the natural starting points. You could add density up and down big swaths of forest avenue without it being particularly controversial. It might even be welcomed, frankly, in a lot of the areas. And so let's start there and let's just start making progress. And then we can come back to what we know is going to be more contentious. The more it gets into the settled single family neighborhoods that have been like that for generations, that's going to be a longer term conversation. And that's fair. Those are totally legitimate concerns that are going to be raised by people in those neighborhoods that doesn't have to derail the reform conversation for every place in the city. And I think that's the key point. Yeah. This brings up the issue of growth. We people are coming to Portland every day from across the economic spectrum from wealthy people to asylum seekers with nothing all looking to have some part of the city. And this has been going on for quite a while. Our population has not grown. The net population is pretty steady for decades. And a lot of the tension that you probably come aware of in the city is from this feeling of being displaced. And I just wonder what your thoughts are about growth. How big can Portland get and retain the qualities that that you know, you appreciate and are you happy with the level it is now? Could it be bigger? Could it? Yeah, I mean, I don't think that's so much a decision for us to make. But I think it is in terms of the policy, especially in the zoning. It really dictates how much you can grow. But what I think, you know, in terms of overall population, I I don't see any signs that we're going to witness dramatic shifts. I mean, we went through a pandemic and it doesn't seem like that's a dramatic shift on the total population. You know, it's hard to see something that's bigger, right? Outlier kind of case than that is. I think the the long term trend, though, that is is very important and what gets missed and what is having a huge impact on the city as a whole is the gradual decrease in average households. And when people look at Portland from decades ago and say, you know, it used to be a lot more, it was like population closer to 80,000. So how was it that this dynamic wasn't in play? And a big part, not the only part, but a big part of the answer is, well, the household size came down and especially after the pandemic, it's the conversations that I have with particularly a lot of people. And in my age code saying, you know, your two bedroom with a home office, there used to be three people populating those bedrooms. That's how it is that you can have a kind of growth with stable population and still have the software pressure on the housing market. I mean, that's, I think, sort of one of the untold stories. And and that's why it's so important that we have policies in place that are going to continue to allow us to add housing stock, because I don't see that trend reversing itself. And if anything, I would expect that to accelerate after the pandemic. And you're going to see more and more people working from home, doing things like that, saying they want more space, all of those sorts of things. So either we're going to let fewer and fewer people live in what used to be three and four bedroom sort of dwelling units, or we're going to have to continue to add housing stock to address it. I mean, I think that's sort of the long term existential challenge. And again, I think that it's what's lacking now isn't understanding that that is an issue. It's concrete policy to make that happen, because the most important thing is just that we start to make incremental progress every year that goes by. And we let ourselves get in this dynamic of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good and say, well, you know, that that thing's not affordable enough. The rate isn't low enough. I mean, I'll probably agree with that 99% of the time when it happens. But what we have to stay focused on is, is it better than the alternatives? And if the alternative is waiting another year for another thing to come along and try to do it all over again, the answer to that is really clearly no. And that's the kind of conversation that we have to have as a community to make sure that we're staying on track to do it. Again, right now over the last several years, the amount coming through the pipeline, if you will, the amount that's being proposed in the affordable housing pipeline is plummeting. So. Combine that with inflation, interest rates, all of those sorts of things. It's really an urgent situation that we're facing right now. And that's why it's so important that we stay focused on making that kind of incremental progress, if that's what it takes. I mean, I guess I would suggest that the we did get a big influx of population during the pandemic. Remote workers from other states came here with their with their jobs and our population didn't grow, which means that other people who either live here can't afford to live here anymore or other people who would have come here can't. And, you know, and if there's in the absence of a growth strategy, that's going to continue. Yeah, as long as it has a desirable place. Oh, yeah, sorry, sorry. And I didn't mean to suggest that that dynamic wasn't applied. I was just the total population of sharing, obviously. But yeah, yeah, I mean, I think we can do is count the people over here. And if it's the same every year, even though we know people are moving in. Right. I mean, yeah. And I think the other long term dynamic that there's no easy answer for, of course, is we do have to be cognizant of the fact that Maine has very old houses. And that means that we we do have to get a grip on, OK, how do you make things like life safety improvements without accelerating gentrification at the same time? And that's a very tricky balancing act. But it's also very important. You know, I was on the council right after the noise street fire and trying to figure out how are we going to respond to that from a public safety perspective, but but that's a conversation for another day. The other subject you brought up was homelessness. And you probably drove by tents on your way here. I certainly did. And it's it's shocking that we've gotten to this point. You know, the city of Portland didn't create homelessness. And and but here it is. It's something that we have to deal with this community. And what are your thoughts? How did how did we get here? And what are the what are the things that the city government can do to to deal with this population in a humane way? Yeah, I mean, I think it's it's the most challenging immediate term issue, obviously. I think the difficulty this year, because we've had this dynamic in the past. What's different this year is the scale, right? It's not like having homeless people camping is some newfound thing, especially in some time. I think the city is trying to move in the right direction right now. I think the idea of making sure that we're partnering with all of the nonprofits that can provide more personalized kind of services to do everything that we can to get individuals placed, be it at the shelter or any recovery facilities or anything else is generally the right strategy. I think what has happened this year is, you know, to be direct, I mean, I think the council was very slow to act on this initially, and it is so much more difficult to deal with a homeless in camp. And once it reaches critical mass because for a variety of reasons, but not the least of which is you're then you're talking about a population that's very vulnerable, that has a lot of substance abuse issues, mental health issues. If you allow those communities to grow, it becomes incredibly dangerous for them, but it also surrounds them with other individuals that make it more difficult to get the people that we could be getting placed potentially into placements. I mean, if you're surrounded by people that you know, I mean, and especially if you're suffering from some of those conditions and your previous experience was going to the city shelter at Oxford Street where you were sleeping on mats 18 inches away from people. It's very understandable why people would not be chomping at the bed to sign up for that. And I think part of the difficulty is it's like anytime we deal with homelessness is that there's a level of it where I think sometimes it's it's hard for people to think of it from that perspective. You and I can sit here and have a very quick conversation where, you know, Greg, the shelter isn't there anymore and move to the outskirts in the city. It's a totally new setup. Why don't you check it out? You have your own space, your own outlets, walkers available, all sorts of things like that. But you and I are always suffering from substance abuse or suffering from serious mental illness, and if you're part of that population, it's totally understandable why you would be hesitant to sign up for services. So the more you get surrounded by people, then that aren't going to have your best interests at heart, the more difficult it is. And obviously, this isn't a police state. So again, just round people up and force them into shelters and things like that. There's no easy kind of silver bullet answer. But I think the biggest thing that has happened this year is that we let the encampments get to that critical mass before we. So what should city have done? I think they should have stopped the encampments early on. I think they should have enforced the ordinance as I think they should have worked with the nonprofits when it was a smaller population to make sure that every individual was being addressed and that we were trying to place them in services anywhere that we could. You know, there is a whole constellation of consolation, if you will, of nonprofits in the community that know how to work with one another, you know, community housing in May and the Milestone Foundation and the home team and like, you know, again, it's Portland. Like these are people operating in the same space. Everyone knows each other like and getting those groups together and on the same page and working with the population is something that we know how to do. We know that it can be effective, but it has very limited capacity. And so once you let an encampment grow and grow and grow, then it's going to be exponentially more difficult to deal with it. And I think that also makes it easier for people outside the city to look at Portland and say, oh, that's the place that I want to be right now. There's a community growing up. There's a whole city growing up. And again, it's it's not like there's a silver bullet solution to any of this. But if you send the message that we're not going to enforce the ordinances and we're going to let the encampments grow, it gets so much more difficult to deal with it. That's when it gets so much more dangerous. I mean, the you know, I think I don't want to get too far afield, but I mean, that's that's the part of it that is so heartbreaking is that it's not my opinion. It's not just my opinion. But if you talk to any of the providers, everyone knows that these are horrible for the population that we're supposedly caring about, right? The instances of rape and sexual assault of women are horrific in the encampments. The rampant drug use, the risks that come from that, especially now with fentanyl and it's sort of infiltrating other illicit drugs. And so like the lack of knowledge that you're even doing it, just the risk to the people in the encampments is so much higher than it used to be even a few years ago. And so, I mean, I think we just have to be honest about that, that it's not a humane way to treat the homeless population like it is not in their best interests. And we're not doing anyone any favors by pretending like this is an acceptable situation. So you're saying the encampment itself is the is the problem? Or is it the the underlying economic forces that produce this level of homelessness that exceeds this service provider's ability to to take care of? Well, it's both. But if we did more to prevent the encampments from growing to the size that they've grown this summer, as we've done in previous summers, I think you would have a much higher likelihood of success. What do you think what I'm seeing is not not an abnormal level of unhoused people rather than you're saying it's it's the the the way that they're collected is is different rather than that, you know, the way that. Well, I think that number, I think it's both. But I do think that a significant portion of it is the number of people that are choosing to stay in encampments that potentially have other options that is different this year from from everything that I know. Now, admittedly, you know, I don't have access to the same amount of information and data on a daily basis that I used to. But everything that I hear is that that sort of significant portion. It's certainly not the only portion of it. We know that affordability is a big issue and that's contributing to larger levels of homelessness throughout the state and the country. Certainly, that's also a part of it. But that doesn't mean that there wasn't more that we could have done earlier on. Now, I think it's more and more difficult to get up. Historically, I think, obviously, we'll start to see the populations go down as it gets colder and that's a pretty steady historical pattern and we hope that that helps to get people placed in services or encouraged to get placed in services. And, you know, hopefully, I think we can do a better job of utilizing the new shelter, too, because there, you know, there is a major difference between that facility and what we used to give people access to and it can be very helpful to people that need help. You talk about substance abuse and untreated mental illness. Those are both really prerogatives of the state. And clearly, something's not working. And what's your analysis of that? Is the state not doing its job? Is there is a requirement for the city to step in and do more? Yeah, I mean, I think clearly those are broader societal issues. Like none of these things that we're discussing, they're not going to be fixed by City Hall, you know, whether it's me or anyone else running or anyone else that could be run, like we should be very, very clear about that. I do think that there's a bigger role for the state to play in these issues as with the federal government. It's no secret that, you know, again, when we talk about homelessness, but particularly around substance abuse and mental health issues, it's no secret that historically a huge percentage of the population that comes into our homelessness system in the city is not from the city of Portland. It's usually between 65 and 70 percent are not Portlanders. So we know that this is a de facto kind of regional service. And I think it would be tremendously helpful, obviously, to get back to treating it more like that. It wasn't all that long ago. I mean, until Paula Page was governor, there was at least a more rational system in place and general assistance used to be used much more to fund shelter operations and that changed. That was not all that long ago. That was just under his administration. So definitely we could use more help from the state. Definitely we could use more help from the feds. But that being said, that doesn't mean we just throw up our hands and walk away. I think some of the things that the city should be looking to do is really expand our partnerships with nonprofit providers and also working with the hospitals. You know, I think there are a lot of overlapping interests right now. You know, it's I mean, to be blunt about it, it's it's not in main meds interests to have people who are overdozing being dropped off in the ER. Like that's not good for their operations. That's not good for their staff. You know, the complexity of putting together programs like that is is such that, you know, I certainly wouldn't want to make any specific promises or anything. But I have to believe that there are opportunities for City Hall to work more robustly with the hospitals and other nonprofit providers to see what else we could do. It won't fix the issue, but it will certainly help some people. And these are just such pressing urgent issues that I think we owe it to the people and we owe it to Portland and the community as a whole to make sure that we're really focused on them and trying to do everything that we can to make the situation a little bit better. Do you see the issue of the encampments and homelessness in general as distinct from the general housing shortage? No, no, I don't. And I think that's one of the reasons that I continue to to talk so much about affordable housing development. The first biggest thing that everyone would point to with homelessness that we would love to do is, hey, have you guys ever heard of this thing called housing first? You know, I mean, you probably remember when I was first on the council that that sort of was a new thing and Portland was very much a leader in that. The issue is 100 percent one of capacity. We just we know that works. We all believe in all the providers are behind it. If we can get the long term homeless population placed into housing first, that is way more successful than all of our other options, but we simply don't have the capacity to do it right now. And, you know, that's a huge, huge part of what's contributing as well. You know, we just we do not have that capacity right now. And that's another part of what we need to work on in in zoning and land use to make. You know, the funding streams for those are a lot trickier, but anything that we could do to make it easier is something that we have to explore. Another complex aspect of homelessness is the influx of asylum seekers. And we often sometimes we lump them together, sometimes we don't. But but they seem very distinct in terms of how they got here and their ambitions and their needs. And what's the city's role there? What do you like to see the city doing more to integrate asylum seekers? Yeah, I mean, I think that's the toughest issue. And as long as we continue to treat asylum seekers as if they're the same issue as the as the chronically homeless, for example, you know, we're going to struggle with capacity, provide services to people in need. I think that asylum seekers are great for the community. I think, you know, the diversity of background and experience and everything else that they bring is sort of needed. We know from the broader perspective of sort of demography and economics in Maine that they can be a huge boost to our labor force, you know, help with our aging population issues, all of those sorts of things. I think it's as simple as, you know, we need more help from surrounding communities from the region and from the state. And I think at some level, it's really that simple. 1,600 people in a city of 67,000 is going to strain things well beyond the breaking point, and I think that's what we're seeing. But we should be welcoming. I think we want to be welcoming and taking 1,600 people and spreading them over. You don't even have to say the entire state of Maine, but, you know, just up and down coastal Maine, relatively close to Portland. That is something that we should be able to do with a lot less pain, you know, from, you know, parts of York County all the way up into Brunswick and certainly Brunswick and other communities are doing something to help. But I think we just need those efforts to be a little bit more robust, because 1,600 people in a state of 1.3 million should not be that big of an issue. What's the mayor's role in that, getting that effort going? I mean, it's already going, but yeah, I mean, I think we have to just continue to work with the governor and her administration. I have every reason to believe that they will listen to Portland quite a bit as they develop their new office, looking at these sorts of issues. But, you know, ultimately, it's not in our purview. We don't get to tell the governor what to do. And I wouldn't, I wouldn't try that with Janet. But, you know, I do hope that there is an opportunity to do this, because it is actually bipartisan issue, you know, there is broad support for this from the left and the right. It was State Senator Brachy who was trying to work on this issue this last time. So, I mean, I have to maintain hope that something can be done to help alleviate the issues that we're having. But as we know, there is a big portion of this that is as simple as federal law for how we treat people, and that is a major sticking point. I think me or any mayor, frankly, would continue to advocate for changes to immigration law to allow people seeking asylum to work. There's no good reason that we don't allow that right now. But, yeah, I mean, we have to continue working with every other group that we can. And I think I would include in that, although not as obviously not its own thing, but, you know, certainly intergovernmental organizations like Greater Portland and Council of Governments who have taken a lead role on this, have a role to play in helping convince other communities to step up because they do have the power to to do that if we can be persuasive. Obviously, we don't get to tell the state or the feds what to do. Should somebody be able to use a Portland housing voucher outside the city limits? Well, that's an interesting question. I guess I haven't thought about that in super detail. But my gut says, yes, I think they should. I think housing is a regional issue, and we're not going to solve it entirely within the city limits of Portland. And, you know, anything that we can do to bring down current wait lists, help get people in housing that as affordable as it can be to them is something that we should support. OK. Shifting here slightly, a lot of the city's agenda over the last few years has been set through the referendum process, not through the representative elected official process. And having participated in it and watched it, what's your belief, you know, thoughts on that? And is that a good way to run the city? Is there a better way? I mean, I don't think it's a good way. I think that the the kind of issues that we've been dealing with are just ones that are not well suited to referendums. You know, it's not things like, do you want the right to choose to be written into the Constitution? You know, that's not like an empirical kind of question. Yeah, I am. You know, that type of thing makes more sense. The intricacies of housing policy and zoning. I don't think those are well suited to a referendum process. You know, obviously, the voters supported some of the referendums in 2020. I think the jury is out on some of the results of those. Others, obviously, notably the rent control, the backers themselves already put forward things to modify it and change it. So we know that that wasn't perfect in any one's eyes. I think what is most concerning, though, is really that when we have so many of those things on the table at one time, that their inner play is really complicated to understand. And I hope that we can get back to a place where there's enough trust that we can start to work those things through a normal legislative process. Here, competing views here from different stakeholders and try to really think through those things. You know, because certainly I'm a renter myself, I'm sensitive to the rental market, what's happening there and understand the impetus. But it's also stuff like we need to be cognizant of the fact that the long term solution is getting more housing stock onto the market. So what is the impact of all of these referendums taken holistically? How they interact with one another? What is the impact of that on the long term trend? And those are the types of things that are not suited to a referendum process. Why doesn't the council obviously you can't change things for five years, but you can propose changes that go back out to the voters that way. And it's something the council hasn't wanted to avail itself of. They also have an option of adopting the the issue without going to the voters and then amending it, which is something else the council has in mind. Is that something that you would consider if you were the mayor? Consider, sure. I mean, I think that we just have an obligation to sort of like follow the facts and say like if what we're trying to do is make housing more affordable and part of the way that we get at that is we need more housing coming onto the market. If this is a proposal and there's some portion of it that conflicts with something tied to a referendum, I don't know why it would be so controversial to put that back out to the voters. You know, it's it's not a rejection of the will of the voters. It's just asking them to weigh in on something like that. Frankly, I wish the council had done that on some things over the last few years. I mean, there was an attempt to stand up a temporary homeless shelter last year that was blocked because of provisions of one of the referendums. I wish that the council would have taken the opportunity to put that to the voters and say like, hey, I don't think this is undermining the will of the voters. I really struggle to think that most people that were voting for the so-called Green New Deal were trying to block the standing up of a temporary homeless shelter on the basis of it being the building repurpose, you know. But again, to your point, that's just a question like you could ask and say, like, surely you didn't mean this, right? You still wanted us to stand up a shelter and try to get homeless people housed, right? And if the voters said, no, that's not what we've been, then they can tell you that. But I think it's all part of just, again, it's you've got to follow the facts where they take you if we're going to make progress. One of the things that we've got a number of referendums on are the short term rentals, and I think it was last time we had one by the renter community and one by the property owners kind of conflicting. They both were voted down. How big a problem do you think short term rentals are in town? And what do you think of the current regulation system? I mean, so I sort of have two things with most short term rentals. I think from most of what I hear anecdotally, the first big issue is just enforcement. I mean, what's on the books in terms of what are allowed, non-owner-occupied short term rentals is pretty limited. But no one I talked to seems to think that we're anywhere near enforcing that numerical limit. So that really muddies the waters. And it's like you don't want to say, oh, well, because no one's following a law, we're just going to pass other laws and act like that's really going to do much. So I think that's point one is we need to make sure that that is being enforced. Point two, I think, you know, just in my personal view, having been there for some of the early parts of this is. But my concern is really that this just becomes a proxy for a broader issue. And it really gets blown out of proportion to what we're talking about overall. If the ordinance is enforced, there's a couple hundred units out of 17,000 plus that are trying to round down, taking a very restrictive number of what gets counted in the overall regulated rental market and that sort of thing. We just we can't let that take up, you know, 25 to 50 percent of our oxygen on the conversation. I mean, that's that's my honest broad strokes kind of view is we have to stay focused on the things that are going to have the biggest impact. I understand why that's an emotional issue. But I think if we get the enforcement in line, you know, then we can come back and have a real conversation about how much time and energy we want to continue to focus on this. Because again, I think we've voted on this four times now. I've lost count. And yeah, I think I think we've had four to two at once. And then there was the one that was part of the big DSA slate. Yeah. And at least maybe one other. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, you mentioned education. This is one of your top priorities. So what's the mayor's role there? You know, the school board jealously guards its. Yeah. Well, a couple of things. I mean, so one, I mean, I was on the school board, former finance chair of the board. So I understand and completely respect the, you know, delineation of authorities between the two groups. At the same time, I will say in terms of overall influence and sort of policy setting, this is a really critical time for Portland public schools. The management issues that came to light last year are really significant ones. And our financial auditors found that the district was operating without a segregation of duties. I work in accounting and finance. That's like a violation of the first principle of how you run an operation. We know that there were half of our employees, at least we're not getting paid accurately, timely, some combination of those things. So there are really, really serious issues there. And I think that the other thing that we have to be very cognizant of is that in all likelihood, and I was on the school board and part of the group that was cleaning up after the last mass, in all likelihood, this is not going to be the only thing that we found. You're not going to have an organization that is really disorganized in its financial management, but otherwise in very long ways, right? And so we just need to be cognizant of that. And I think what, so in terms of sort of the softer power of the mayor's role, if you will, I would just say directly, it really matters that the next mayor can talk to the schools about this. I mean, we have a bunch of brand new school board members right now who are in a virtually impossible situation, trying to do everything that they possibly can to write the ship and get things right. They need people that they can really talk to right now in real detail. Say, like, you know, did you look in this area? Did you look in this area? What about this kind of programming? Has that been audited? Have you looked at this other thing? You've got questions about this. Have you run it through the main school board's association, the main school management association? I mean, like, to really know that, I think it's important. The idea that the next mayor won't be able to have a legitimate conversation about those issues is really troubling to me. So that's sort of part one, I would say, with where the school system currently is and what I would like to see improve certainly by the time my young son is starting to come through these schools. But the second thing, which is more forward-looking, much more hopeful is I think the right mayor can help be a bridge between the city, the school department and other entities. And what I mean by that is in the time since I first was elected at the school board and until today, the relationship between the public school's proper and other entities affecting children and families is a lot more complicated and intertwined. So I'm talking about childcare providers. I'm talking about after school programs, summer programs, public transportation, all of those things have become more and more relevant to the well-being of children and families. And I think that the right mayor can be a really good convener for a broader conversation about how we can all leverage different entities and resources throughout the community to help strengthen the overall message of the school department in those ways to say, how can we be doing more to partner with childcare providers right now if we can be successful in that? We know what that does for families, for economic development. We know what it does for equity in the broader scheme of things. You know, working with Metro and other public transit, you know, if you can get all of those things working well. And Metro has a great partnership with the schools right now and everything they do for high school students and everything else. But to make sure that we're really robustly providing opportunities for kids of all income levels, otherwise we know that we're going to see only some kids be able to participate in extracurricular activities. How do we do those sorts of things? How do we help the schools and city partner with people that can provide summer programming and services? That's important generally in education. But if you look at Portland's demographics, see our levels of poverty, our levels of English language learners. The summer slide is real. And if we don't find a way to provide really robust services as a community to our demographic of kids, we know that we're going to have inequitable outcomes at the end of the day, like the researchers. So when you say as a community, you mean more than just the school board through the school budget? Yes, 100 percent. And I think that that's the more forward looking piece of what a mayor can do working with the school department to say, how can we do these different things? Think of another far a little bit different kind of example. But this is part of what I did as chair of the Economic Development Committee. You know, having been on the council, having been on the school board, I could see how the pieces fit together. So we took a program, the tax increment financing program, that's usually used in most communities throughout the state to give a tax break to a developer so they can build a sidewalk or a bad street lighting or do something like that. And we said, we're building your town and not somebody else's. Right. Yeah. And we kind of said, you know, it's not really an issue here so much. We're not having to browbeat people to build important. But the impetus for this is it's an economic development tool. So I looked at it and I said, you know what? I keep hearing from the business community is the real issue is actually workforce development, talk to the banks, talk to the health care providers like, hey, we need more people that can fill these kind of jobs. So how can we get people trained? How can we get them set up for success and give them greater opportunities while also serving those needs? Well, what we did is we repurposed the TIF program, use the funding instead of giving it to a tax break to fund that program. And the way we stood it up quickly was I reached out to Portland Adult Ed and said, I bet I know who can stand up an English language program really, really quickly. Portland Adult Ed. And so that's what we did. We partnered with them. We created a new program to do it. And so because of that, we have people that are getting job skills that they didn't have before. We have a lot of people getting English language skills that they didn't have before we expanded Portland Adult Ed significantly, which was a long term goal of the school department. And in this particular case, by running it all through that program, we actually have saved the city money because everything that we did with that in in terms of designating it for the tax increment, financing, that means that the city of Portland gets more general fund education for schools. We get more revenue sharing because the amounts that flow into this program are sheltered from the state's calculations. So that's a little bit more far flung and technical, but it's those kinds of things where if you have the right leadership there, you can see the connections and the opportunities. And I think our world is more complex than it was 15 or so years ago. Certainly much more than it was 20 or 30 years ago. And there's an opportunity with the right leadership to really leverage the resources that we have in the school department and make it something that is more broadly considered in the broader context of what's good for families, what's good for students, what's what's good for the community at large. This is school related. Do you have any thoughts about consolidating the high school? And if we were to do that, which one would be the do you want to end your career right now? I'll just say I'll leave the details of that to those schools. But I mean, I think the numbers show that that's likely to happen at some point. And that's a conversation that they're going to have to take seriously. And obviously are trying to pursue state funding to help with such a thing. But again, it's we got to follow the facts on it, you know, it's not. We're not quite there numerically yet, but it's not going to be the case forever. Then it's in the best interests of students to be maintaining two high schools and not really at the funding to to keep them both through operating. Yeah, but yeah, well, I'm assuming we're not going to consolidate that at least in the short term, because we still run the paths program out of there. So if the idea is we need to get out of a facility, closing Casper Bay High School still leaves you running the paths program and you're still paying for the buildings, so that's all. So this is a rank choice election and you're going to put yourself in the first slot. Who comes in two? You know, I think I got to see how it plays out, honestly. You know, I think we all know each other for the most part. I mean, I've known Andrew and Pius for a long time. I've known Mark for not quite as long, but certainly I've known him as well. I don't know Dylan. But I think we're going to have to discuss and see what people's ideals. I mean, I think for me, fundamentally, what it's about. And again, the biggest part of the reason that I decided to run is I just don't see the action. And so part of what I'm going to be looking for is when we have debates and stuff, we would discuss a lot of these same issues. I'm going to say, so who's done it? You have three members of the council right now. If this is how you address affordable housing. I don't care so much about the words. I care about who got stuff on an agenda, who's working the process, who has stuff under review with staff, the planning board, the council committee. What happened? I want to see who's actually working on those things. Because I think we're all talking about the same issues and saying we want to go in the same direction. So I mean, that's what I'm going to be looking for as much as anything is figuring out of all of the stuff that I hear from the other candidates who's actually made a career of trying to work on those issues. And I guess the last question for me is sort of the essential question is, why do you want to be mayor and why should people vote for you? You know, I think that Portland needs a change. I think that if we're honest with ourselves, the way things have been running under the current council is not going well. I think there's a hesitancy to take on major issues. I think there's a hesitancy to make tough decisions, particularly if it offends, you know, louder politically active groups in the community. And I think that's really hurting people. It's preventing us from making progress on the issues that the vast majority of the city agrees on. I have been on the city council, I've been on the school board, I know how municipal government works and I got a lot of things done. I mean, we pass minimum wage that has helped thousands of people. We kept hundreds, if not thousands of asylum seekers from getting thrown out of the street by Paula Paid, we built, I built job skills training programs that have helped tons of people go through them. We built housing safety offices. We renovated elementary schools after 20 plus years of trying. Like, I would, you know, I know how to get things done. And I would put my record up against any one of the candidates who's running with all due respect, and I think that's what we need right now. It's a mayor that can move us from a big idea like affordable housing to this is how we're going to do it. This is how we're going to get it done. This is how we're going to make progress. And that is the most important thing. Right. Well, I guess we'll leave it at that. And thank you for coming in and thank you for putting yourself out and running for office. Yeah, thanks for having me. Good to talk.