 Hi, this is the Portland Media Center Civic IQ series, and I'm Greg Kessich, and I'm here with Mark Dian, former state senator, former state representative, former Cumberland County sheriff, current District 5 city counselor and candidate for mayor. So welcome. Hi, Rick. All right. Thanks for having me today. Yeah, absolutely. Aside from those resonate points, can you tell me a little about your background? Well, I think you covered some of the top line messages, but I mean, one piece that should be said is I spent 21 years with the Portland Police Department. And I think the benefit of that is as far as candidates go, I'm the only one who's actually been an employee of city administration. But more importantly, the time I spent on the department gave me an opportunity to really get to know the neighborhoods of the city and appreciate them for very unique places with aspirations that are local. I mean, some people think of North Deering or Deering Center or the West End. Yes, they live in Portland, but for them, there's another narrative, and that is I live here in the West End, and here's how I expect my quality of life to be. So I think the police department gave me that opportunity. And in terms of campaigning, God, there's no better training than to have to attend a neighborhood police meeting and feel questions on the spot from residents who have concerns about their safety. Where'd you grow up? I grew up in Lewiston. I graduated from Lewiston High, so I'm a Blue Devil. I enjoy it when people here say, I remember you in a certain class in Portland High, and I have to correct that. No, that didn't happen, but I'm glad I have a doppelganger out there. I came to Portland to go to the university. Let me ask you about that. When did you first come to Portland, and what are your recollections of the city then? I arrived in the fall of 72, and I lived out to the Gorham campus, but because of my major was criminology, I spent almost all my class time here in the city. I thought Portland at that time was like a big fishing town. You know, I thought it didn't feel like city. It just felt bigger than what I was accustomed to in Lewiston. And also back home, if you ask someone where they live, they identify a Catholic parish. All right, I was in Holy Cross parish, someone else would say St. Mary's, but here it was my first introduction to the hill in Libbytown and Parkside as places where people lived. I remember the waterfront in particular when I was a young foot patrol officer in 77. How marine-orientated it was, it was trawlers and draggers and lobster boats. It was dark and a bit of a foreboding place. And I sit back in awe as I review the evolution of that district in the city. So that's, we're talking about a 50-year window here in 72 to 2023. I wish it weren't so. What would you say are the biggest changes in that time? Well we've become much more of a destination city. I think when I got here we were blue collar city. Lots of activities required things to be made or harvested. I mean I remember the steelworks over on Warren Avenue and machinists down on the east end. I had a sense that back then we didn't have brew pubs, we had taverns. Most of them were neighborhood. And the men and women there were centered around blue collar work. It wasn't overpopulated with professionals. I mean it didn't bump into a crew of lawyers or financiers talking about whatever was going on in the city of interest of them. So sports were there. Identification was the place. I mean the Westies out of Rusky really saw Portland as centered right there at Danforth Street. And the same applied up on the hill or down in Kennedy Park. I never got a clear understanding of the boundary between Munjoy Hill and the rest of the city. It seemed to always be in flux depending on who you were talking to. So today this city is about finance, it's about legal, it's about medicine, it's about education. And the waterfront has become more of a destination for people coming from outside of Portland for entertainment or some kind of recreation. And the fishing industry kind of just holds on. You know I'm encouraged by ideas of other things that can be harvested and maybe it'll be a resurgence. But I want them to maintain a place. They're a legacy industry and I would hate for one day, 50 years from now, whoever's having this conversation to say, we can point to the time that that just left the stage that Portland never had that history to begin with. Let's go not 50 years, but 10 years. So in your third term as mayor, can you paint me a picture of the city then? My third term as mayor? Yeah, yeah, 10 years from now. I'm always so humble. 20, 233. What's the city going to be like? And yeah, what's your vision for that? I think it would be more dense. We hopefully will answer the demand for people who actually want to live here and contribute and do so in an affordable way. People say we're safer. I mean safety is as much a state of mind like a market as it is about actual events, but they'll feel safer. I want to make sure that they're educated here, that there's an opportunity to be employed here. I think the city will be more dense, taller buildings, more of them. I think there'll be a lot more development around backcove on the peninsula side for sure. I think we will answer the question about how we want to develop Deering and its neighborhoods. You know, whether or not we follow the traffic corridor or not remains an open question. I like to think we have light rail to the city. You know, maybe unions station becomes something that we can taste again for the first time. The capacity to go other places in Maine and New England without relying on automobiles. I think we'll see many more bicycles on the road than we do now. And a lot of them will probably be electric bikes. I think we'll be more involved in an electric based economy. So cars and bikes that rely on that energy source will become more prominent. And I think we'll still be struggling with what to do around commercial traffic. Because that's the last bastion of gas or diesel driven transportation. Yet they create such a vital link to the rest of the world for us. So how do we make it more affordable for them? So I think in terms of energy and housing and safety, that'll be key. Yeah, great. So you raise a lot of good issues. And I think we need to get into about what we need to do now to make those things happen in the future. But as you know, the position of mayor has been the subject of a lot of controversy over the years. There was a lot of effort to get it get the charter changed. And ever since it's there's been a lot of criticism of the current system. And as somebody who's seeking the office, does a mayor make a difference? Does a mayor set influence policy? What's your view about the role of the mayor under this charter system? That's a great question. Because when I talk to residents right now in my campaign, I think sometimes they're actually confused as to what the mayor does or what that office truly is. I think many of them harbor an assumption that the mayor is some sort of chief executive. That he or she can declare policy and then align city departments to accomplish those goals and objectives. And that's not the case. I've I've always seen the mayor more as a speaker of the house than a mayor will establish an agenda for the coming year and try to marshal some consensus among his peers on the council. And I think that I will see myself as a peer to the council. I have the advantage of a bully pulpit. I have the advantage of setting agendas and calling for meetings and getting pieces in motion. But I don't delude myself with the idea that I'm some sort of heroic figure that I alone will make these things happen. So I think when I what are the tools for the mayor to set the agenda? I think it is to have a clear understanding first of what the public hopes to see achieved and to create some trust with his or her constituency that I've heard you. I will articulate that into a workable agenda. I'll consider what benchmarks might be realized to give you evidence that we're moving on that topic. And then I want to turn my focus to the council. It's much like being a chair in a legislative committee at the state house, two parties, desperate views of the world, an openness to be conflicted. And out of that marshal consensus and an agreement about what policy would be most advantageous to our constituents. So what happens in the council chamber is just a small piece of the work in my mind. The large part of the work should be one-on-one meetings with counselors to make the case. I become the advocate for the residents of the city because my assumption is if they've elected me, they agree with my agenda. And they may have informed me to a greater detail than I even consider. So it's advocacy work one-on-one. And it's about giving them the opportunity to see that we can be a team that we might not agree on each point. But there's a value that we have to act collectively. There's room for dissent, but it should be productive dissent. It shouldn't be dissent just to simply throw a wrench in the production. If there's a dissent that announces something we haven't considered, they should do that. But my overall goal is to create a working team. And I think currently people want to hear programs like I actually have a list like I'm running for president, right? I'm going to do everything like some magical Santa Claus. And I'll deliver it without cost or hurt or the necessity to work at it. I believe a success takes about five years. That's an overnight success. It doesn't happen at the pull of a trigger or flipping on a switch. I love that commercial. Just flip on the switch and we'll be there. I think it takes much more work than that. So that's my role as mayor. And at the same time, to build a relationship with the city manager. I think manager West has made it clear that she wants to consider the council, and I'm sure more so with the mayor, this idea of a partnership. So we both have different advantages to work from. She has to make it all work. Whatever we decide, she's the engineer. She has to turn it into practical, affordable delivery. So I have to have an open communication with her. And I'm glad to see they're on the same floor. They can go back and forth and talk things through. So that's my role as the mayor is to be a servant leader to the council. And what about the public? What's the mayor's role in terms of communicating city policy? I think the mayor is the official storyteller. I think the mayor's role is to give a narrative that's understandable to the public and try to clear up the fog and nuance that can occur in council deliberations. I have to be the person that the constituencies and the media can get clarity and concise and passionate answers for if it's necessary. The buck stops at the mayor's office in order to explain ourselves as a collective to the public. So you're a bridge person. So you've got to make sure you've got the right story to tell, and then you have to tell the story as factually even in the light of criticism that could follow as to why we're doing the things we're doing. So in that sense, it feels a lot like my role as a lawyer. I represent clients. I advocate their story. It isn't about Mark Dion anymore when I go to the rostrum. It's about making sure a judge, a jury, the general public understands why we took the actions we took. So we've had three people hold this position, very different styles, different kinds of administrations. And I'm wondering what have you learned from watching how other people have handled the job, and is there anything that you would like to emulate from any of the three administrations that would have preceded you, anything you're going to try to avoid? That's always tough to pass judgment on someone who gave their very best, or at least gave it their very best as they understood the role. I see no benefit in open conflict with the city manager. The city manager is the employee of the council, but as mayor, I would like to consider the city manager as a co-leader to try to have a straight line relationship with them. They have to believe in your vision, and you have to believe in their capacity to carry out that mission, and that requires trusting each other, no surprises. I think open warfare is counterproductive. It hurts the city. Never mind the council, never mind the manager or the person, the mayor bringing that war. It indicates the city can't manage itself before you even start deciding who's right and who's wrong. It's never binary that way, and setting that up is not good. I think some other mayors may have saw their role as more central. They were the voice and the complete enlightenment of what a mayor should be. I don't think that's the case. In the committees I've worked on, as I said, I much rather be a servant of the committee in order to get them to coalesce around an idea. Hopefully it still resembles the idea that I brought to them, but the process and an agreed upon consensus for a decision is important to the city's best interest. I think being mayor, one has to remember every day your work is not about your own best interest and what it might mean for the future. It's about the present day needs of the residents and what's in their best interest. Some of my colleagues say, well, you always act as a centering influence. You're grounded. I don't get wrapped up too emotionally. I try to keep it civil, business-like, in public and privately. They chuckle that I function like a diplomat. I try to bring all the various views together. To do that, you can't demonize somebody. You can't outwardly attack simply for the purposes of a cheap political point. Don't worry. The council provides lots of opportunities to do that if you're interested, but I'm not interested in that. I want people to come to me using your five-year scale and say, look, things got done, Mark, while you were there. I think the important work you probably won't even see because it'll be done in a one-to-one basis. It'll be the same with leaders in the community. I will meet with them. I will hear them out. I'll try to figure out how to get them into the fabric of a decision. But that's the role. I guess that's what it is. It's shuttle diplomacy on behalf of the city to see if, in fact, where can you strike an agreement? Who's involved? Have they been heard? Those are the kinds of questions. I think other mayors have done that. I think Kate, I mean, I've worked closely with Kate, Snyder, at Current Mary on a number of issues. I don't think we're that far apart. Once in a while, she says, you're still a cop the way you approach these things. I say, why can't you help it? I was 32 years in that business, teaching you certain things. She might take more of a curve to get to a point where I'm more inclined to go straight. Once I feel I have a consensus, then we need to strike so that we can go on to the next decision. I don't like delaying inevitable things. Let's bring it to a vote and have a vote, and then we can move on. That brings up a point. The council is a place where disparate interests come and try to settle disputes. That's sort of the function of the council. Sometimes you're going to get consensus, and everybody's going to agree, but a lot of times you're not. How do you get people to continue to work together after their perspective is lost or their point of view? Somebody once told me when I was on the so-called losing side, it's not that you have a bad idea we're not ready for it yet or the public isn't ready for it. It's no reflection on you and your thinking. That's the approach I would take. We had to take a vote. If it's before us, there's a certain immediacy to it. We can't study it to death. I want to feel that I've made every possible effort to create a consensus. I would allow the council to see if they could in the moment. If they can't, you take the vote and you move on. When they chuckle, when I've said that to them, I said, look, in law school, I paid attention to minority opinions because now there's suddenly the bread and butter of the majority. In the moment, they were grieved, but their thinking has been borne out. I had a meeting with a certain counselor because she and I had a dispute about a policy thing. I'd like to not to pursue it any further in that particular form. I didn't think it was going to be productive. We met off-site and we talked it through. I better understand her context than she does mine. I hope it was one more brick in the trust bridge so in the future she'll be more open to what I have to say as I will with her. That's that human resource word that, again, I can give you that Santa Claus list of pledge promises for programs. That's nice, but none of that can occur unless you build a platform with the council to fairly and honestly air those things out. They got to trust you. They don't want to feel like they're going to get sandbag or be littled or demeaned or attacked as the enemy. I'm not going to ask you for a list of programs, but I wonder if you could give me just a short list of what you think the greatest challenge is facing the city right now. I've put it out as questions. I said I'm not running on ideas of listing programs. It's an aside, I once worked as a Santa Claus as a college job and I felt like I was perpetuating that risk. That didn't get in your resume. No, no, that's a deep dive. I was telling kids something was going to happen when I was absolutely sure I had no idea if it would. That's why talking about programs is in essence making a promise that in all fairness you have no idea if it's ever going to be realized. What I've been talking about is there should be two questions we ask on the council. There'll be two questions that I'll ask myself when initiatives are brought forward. Do they make us safer and who the safe party is? Is as much a conversation as what the threat is to that safety? The second one is affordability. Can we afford it as a city? How do we determine something that's affordable? The most elusive pony in the corral is this idea of affordable housing. I've asked many people and I've gotten as many answers as to what constitutes affordable housing. So it goes down the line, taxes, fees. Most people don't realize that half of the budget for the city of Portland is predicated on fees, not property tax. You go to Falmouth, it's all property tax. It's a different kind of conversation when you say, am I going to reduce taxes? I like to believe that I work as hard as possible to limit the growth or at least intentionally manage a growth of a tax base if I have to, an attacks levy that follows from it. So when I hear some people talking about, well, let's do away with commercial zoning. It sounds sexy, right? It's speaking to another idea, but I go, look, there's a purpose for commercial property in a city. It contributes its own resources to our overall best interest. It answers, pretends to answer the idea, how are we affordable? What's the consequence? So that's what I want to say when I go to the council. If I go to the podium and say, look, this year, two questions, everything we talk about will have to answer one of these two questions that the public has told me repeatedly in different ways is what's on their mind. And one of the most visible ones on safety is what to do with encampments in that entire question. Well, let me push you a little on affordability, because affordability of housing is the number one issue of the people I talk to, and it's been sort of the standard answer to every politician, every candidate for office that I've ever interviewed in Portland. Wait, let me fill in the blank. I'm going to do it. Yeah. And how? You know, like how, when you're talking about expanding housing opportunities and making it affordable, what can the city do? First of all, people should understand we're not in the housing development business, but they think we are, that we can go out and purchase a piece of property and throw up some sticks and call it affordable housing. That's not our role. I think our, I know our primary role is to provide leverage financing, that if a group is coming together with a proposal, we provide that spot financing that can realize other streams of cash for them so they can pull off the project. We have some incentives, you know, in the inclusionary zone concept that if they don't build something that's considered affordable by whatever metric they propose at the initiation of their project, then they put money aside into the Jill Dusson Housing Trust Fund, which for the most part lays kind of dormant, almost $10 million, because developers are caught up in a cycle of unpredictable materials costs. I mean, a simple residential unit's about $350 a square foot as high as $500 or more. They don't know if they can get the sticks they are on time to answer the estimate that they were working from. Personnel, find me a plumber, please, or a carpenter, or an electrician. I mean, I have some work to do in my own home with low-level problems to be solved. And I'm told it'll be about 18 months before I can get back to you. I mean, that's not an unusual response. Contractors are facing the same kind of challenge. The third place that slows things down where the city could intervene is in the entire permitting process. We take a long time to make an administrative decision about the suitability or the standards that we expect in a housing initiation. All right? It just, the refrain is the same. I came in, they gave me a list of things to do. I jumped through the hoop and suddenly there was a new hoop. I marshaled my resources, answered that demand. And then there was a third. And time is money. And the timeline not only impacts the ability to build, but the cost of material. So it's not a benign experience to say I was held up for 16 months getting permits. I served as co-chair of the School Construction Committee. And now, we spent $60 million on a number of schools. But the story from the general contractors and the architects is they hadn't worked in Portland on a significant project. They actually assumed they'd get all the permits done in four months. When they're working for the Portland School Board, yeah. They thought it'd all be done in four months. And everything would be good. And it wasn't. And it took multiple cycles of four months to get things done. That slows down construction. I've pressed that with Manager West. Of late, she's hired a consultant to review that. But I think we can try to ramp it up. I worked with a significant employer here in town who wanted to build affordable workforce housing for his employees. He was even going to give each apartment an electric bicycle, which I thought was pretty novel. And I set him up with people in the city to try to get it done. And after a couple months, I bumped into him. And I asked him how it was going. He said, listen, Mark, thanks for what you did. But I'm going to Westbrook. He says, the minute I showed up, they were willing to get it done next week kind of attitude. And he says, so I'm going to build there. He said, I'm still waiting for answers from Portland. He said, I can't afford to wait. You know? Now, the other place where the city has some say, city government has some say, is in the zoning. To rezone a lot of big portions of the city. I mean, we have a couple of what you described as the old working class neighborhoods are very walkable, good public transit. People want to live there so much so that they become wealthy neighborhoods. Montreal Hill on the West End, you can't rebuild similar neighborhoods in other parts of the town would have the same kind of access to transportation. And isn't that an area where the city council and the mayor could really lead to reform to create more housing? Yeah. And it's like affordable housing. I can see it quickly because we're not taking a dive in the pool of details. I think the code was dual revision. They call it recode. That's the jargon. It makes sense. The issue of density is going out to daring. The question is, how is that going to be done? Where is it going to be done? But more importantly, I attended a couple of recode meetings with the public. It didn't go well. I mean, I thought I would just go and sit and observe as a counselor, maybe talk with people afterwards. But it got to a point I went to the front and did an intervention to try. I don't know if that's the right word, but it didn't like it. Because the public that attended were very frustrated. Their answers, they weren't getting answers to their questions. And I suggested to staff afterwards to go, listen, you're totally immersed in planning, the code, everything. That's what you do every day. You take for granted, everyone understands the entire process and all the terms and the procedures. I have some experience with that in my private practice. So I get it. And I know what to be afraid of and what not to be afraid of. They don't know that. We have to figure out a way to be more invested and intentional in communicating the purpose behind certain revision proposals. I'm not against revision. Some people already said that. Dion's a nimby. I'm not a nimby. But I think people deserve a fair shot at understanding the process so they can weigh in or not as to whether they approve it. And I think as a counselor or as a mayor, I've got to make sure that's there. Recently, I voted against the licensing for the immigrant housing center that's going on. I voted against that because we did everything in executive session. And my district had no idea it was going on. They totally misunderstood because if you don't understand something, it's fair money to bet you're going to have a negative opinion of it. No one's confused and says, but I'm sure it's going to turn out all right. That's never the math that anybody executes. And they still don't understand it completely. And we haven't yet to have a community meeting where I could get everybody involved to air it out. And all of them, when I meet with them, say the same thing. I'm not against immigrants. I just think the city's trying to pull a fast one here and put another homeless shelter. And how come this gets approved so quickly? And there was such an extended process for Riverside Street. And how come it appears as builders getting preference? And is it our shelter or not? I mean, basic questions. Having little to do with the occupants, and it went from being a shelter that was supposed to be for families, then it went to individuals that might still come back to families. So everything's always in a dynamic state. And that's what gets residents anxious. Sure. Yeah, but you're talking about a city where people are coming here every day from across the economic spectrum. We have asylum seekers with just the clothes on their back. We're hoping to make a new life here. You have remote workers with very high incomes who are bringing their jobs with them. And to them, Portland looks like a bargain. You have empty nesters, couples selling their big house in the suburbs and moving into an urban apartment. And you have no population growth to speak of in this city for decades. And how do you protect those residents that you're talking about that are coming out to these meetings from displacement when there are new people coming in all the time? How do we welcome people coming in without growing? And I guess the question is, are you in favor of the city growing, having a growth strategy? And if so, how big and how? To be frank, God, I hate trying to triangulate things. I think growth that we're intimating in this conversation is something that's going to occur as a metro. It's not just going to be Portland. We might have a pretty important seat at the table. But what's going on in Scarborough and Westbrook, Gorham, hopefully in Falmouth in time, that should all be part of an understood strategy among the communities. We can't build everything we want here. The available land is going away. And that's why we might see some density in the other neighborhoods. So we've got to, they've got to be part of that process. I need employers to be part of the process. They used to talk about health care benefits. I think they're going to have to start having conversations about how we partner to create in a public-private partnership more housing. I talked about trying to convert commercial retail. And I was told, well, the windows. We have to have certain kinds of windows. And I go, well, listen, if I'm drowning, I don't want to argue about the color of the life ring. Just throw me a life ring. And I've looked, and other cities have made those modifications so that we could look across from the studio. And those top three floors could be residences. If we're standing in the way of that as a city government, we need to get out of the way and facilitate that type of development. But the Portland Metro has grown considerably. It's a city of Portland that hasn't grown. And it is apparently a real draw that people want to live here. And they're not necessarily represented at those meetings. So are you saying 2030, we should be looking at another census of 69,000? I hope. And look, my youngest daughter wants to move here from San Diego to Portland, right? And in our search for a home, I've broadened her horizons from Portland to Cumberland County because there just isn't anything here. And I wish I could say that I could do something to help my grandchildren grow up here. I think it's a great city. I don't know. I'm just telling you, the process, the increased density, is going to create conflict. And you're right, not everybody's there. Some people say, oh, it's just retirees or long-term homeowners that are there, granted. The younger public that is in those neighborhoods could afford these inflated prices. So I don't know how much they see in the conversation. But we're going to have to figure out a way to get them there. That's what I told the staff. They don't even know what a planning board does, really. I just looked at the paper today. They're announcing their workshop on a 70-unit development on Hope Avenue. I've gotten calls already about that. This wasn't the neighborhood that we built into. This isn't our expectation. And it's a conversation where people are fearful and anxious. They said, look, these are going to be luxury apartments. And I said, well, how much are they going to go for? About $700,000. And I said, I hate to report to you. That's kind of a median price right now for a house in Portland of any type. So there's no overnight success on that one. It's going to take some work. But yes, I'd like to think that when I came here in 72, just to put it all in perspective, a single bedroom apartment in daring was $131 a month with light and heat included. But the real message there is a lot of people in my generation came to the city and there was an opportunity to live here. We could find a place, and we could find work. And then we built our lives here and put down roads. And I don't think we're in that place anymore. And we need to look at that. So with the Jill Dusson fund, I talked about on housing committee already is we need to orient that not just to create multi-units and maybe a portion to affordable housing, but build real low-income housing. You know what's been absent from the conversation? Portland Housing Authority, they're doing a lot of good work, but they haven't been part of the community conversation. And neither has haunted the federal level to incentivize housing for that demographic, which I think is the one that's always living on a knife's edge. I'd like to get them off that knife edge. And doing so, it might encourage more affordable housing in the city. On your way over here today, you probably saw people living in tents. I know I did. There's more. I've seen more tents around town. There's hundreds of them, more than I've ever seen. I've been here since the late 80s. And it's shocking. And I see the efforts the council is making to kind of take care of the different larger encampments. But what is your take as somebody who has been here a long time? What is the cause for this incredible influx of homelessness? And what can we do about it? I think the encampments present the most tangible evidence of this idea that we're a service center ever. We could report that we were a service city through some report of math, budget expenditures, contacts with certain individuals. But it wasn't palpable and in the public's vision as it is now. I think the encampments are an unsafe environment. I think people in the camps can be exploited. I don't think it's anybody's best interest to allow a downward cycle of self-harm to occur in those spaces. I think the city has taken a position that we can social work our way out of this one. I don't think that's the case unless there's a role for public safety to manage those spaces so they're safe for everyone. We also have to confront the reality that there could be a significant number of those individuals who come from other cities because they couldn't make it because there were no services. I mean, that's the constant refrain and battle around general assistance. We eat most of those state dollars, but there's some communities are relieved that we do because they haven't had to deal with the issue yet in their community. So this disparity in income and resources, you're playing it out on a live stage right now and what that means. So moving, now this is one person talking, but breaking up an encampment so you can scatter everybody to the wind just to see them recollect is not particularly helpful to anybody's best interests. On the other hand, having people reject offers of housing because they don't want to follow any rules doesn't help their cause. No one likes to follow rules. I follow certain rules every day. That's how we have a civil society, but if you're not housed and we offer you a space that is safe and can to attend to your needs and you can do the kinds of interactions you need to have happen to stabilize your life and move forward, then the rules should be secondary, okay? Right now, there are no rules inside these encampments and God knows what's gonna happen. I mean, I've gone to all of them and sit and watch as any citizen would watch it. I'm telling you now, having people that are impaired by drug or alcohol, trying to navigate the ins and outs of a propane tank and burners is gonna lead to a disaster. I told the manager that. I said, when that goes bang, I said, pardon the colloquialism, but it doesn't go straight up. It goes sideways. It's gonna take out a lot of people and you can't have that. I think you can provide safe camping spaces but they have to be managed. It's just, and therefore if you tell people, look, we'll give you a safe camping area but you're gonna be barred from sleeping everywhere else. We're gonna provide you facilities so you can take care of your toiletry needs. We're gonna provide you whatever you need to stay safe and we're gonna have the social worker team coming in to try to make those connections. I can live with that. I can't live with the fact that certain neighborhoods feel health hostage to the notorious and open criminal conduct that occurs there and I'm really concerned because sometimes some people see this as criminal but I'm seeing individuals with obvious mental health moments of anxiety. Everybody says it's an incident. Usually if somebody's mentally ill, their anxiety gets to such a level that they're not in control of everything. They're not tended to either and that's not safe. I don't know why we can't take someone like that in protective custody and get them to the medical center for an evaluation. It's just the sense that we expect the police to have a complete hands-off approach to that. I don't buy that. I think you can do intelligent policing that helps keep all parties safe and protect the interests of everyone. It's not an easy job, you know? But when I was a cop, if that came down, you figure out a way to get it done. You hit on two of the biggest ones, untreated mental illness and substance use and it's pretty clear that whatever the state is doing is inadequate for this population and where does the city's responsibility begin and end and these people obviously need help. Well, as a practical matter, as a humane manner, you've got to deal with the presenting issues, the identified, and I'll call them a patient because I'm comfortable saying that, the identified patient has a need, it's not being met, and you get a negative outcome as a result. I think we have a duty as human beings and as the local government to intervene and stabilize that person and letting them stay in a camp without any of that is not my idea of stabilization. You do that, but I think as mayor, as counselors, we gotta press the state. This is a state issue. It's kind of like the immigration. Once upon a time, we're both old enough with this city that when Southeast Asians first arrived in Portland, there was nary a ripple to the general community because there was an understanding between Catholic charities and other social service providers that every arrival would have a sponsor family and it worked. Those individual families were the key transition agents to their successful entry into our community. We don't have that now. We get a bus, I'm using it just to make an exaggeration, but it's nonetheless true. They arrive here with no connections and the connections they have by phone and otherwise are people that just got here a couple of weeks ago. So they're not much help to them either and I've said it on the floor of the council and I also was reminded that if you upset the administration, Augusta, they might not meet our needs and general assistance. I go, well, you know, sometimes you gotta roll the dice. I firmly believe the public is in consensus around the idea that this is also a state responsibility. Cities weren't supposed to be immigration reception centers standing alone as islands in the broader state. The state has to come through the conversation in offering the possibility of an office with one person in it. I don't think it's particularly helpful. I know they've lauded that in the media. I'm sorry. I sat back and said, I mean, that's like frosting with no cake, you know? Looks good, it'll taste good. It'll get, I mean, could you think of the person who gets that position? What could they possibly do than sit in the chair and be overwhelmed on day one? Yeah. Right? Yeah. You know, there has to be a commitment to the state, DHHS. And it has to be a commitment and a legislature. I mean, people in our delegation have to stand up and say, look, this is a state problem. Because if it spills out from here, it'll be in Lawson and Bangor in time. They won't escape the trajectory of this issue. It'll just be a delay. So we should get ready for that. And the state should provide leadership. I mean, we're a city council. We don't do foreign policy. I can't intervene in South Texas or Arizona. There are other people that need to do that. You know, and we only have such a great reputation that whatever problem you throw away by God, we're gonna figure it out. Like we have unlimited capacity and resources to do it. And I'm telling you, running out of runway. I know it's not a pretty picture. I'm gonna go back to something I think I heard you say is that you would be open to encampments that were with services that were regulated that had some supervision? No, I think the services, you're close. Okay, okay, complete the loop. Completely loop, okay. A managed campsite would be opened, of course, to access from our social services teams as well as outside third parties that wanna participate in that strategy. But it would be managed by the police to make sure that it's a safe space. And it would welcome those who wanna camp in that environment. But the only way that's gonna work is we have to have the will to say we will not allow camping all over the city. That if you need, we don't have space and housing and you have to camp, we respect that reality. And we're gonna provide you safe harbor at whatever that location is. So I think we reduce the threats that are actual via butters to these current encampments. We make it safe for the people who have to choose to live in a tent. I mean, I wouldn't choose to do that. If somebody offered me a bed somewhere, I'm out of here. But then there are others right now. It's like a, it's a Switzerland where no one can touch them for anything they're doing. Look, I've watched them deliver drugs. I was a cop long ago. I know what a handoff looks like. I mean, in the past, I would have walked up and said, can you turn around and put your hands on the load? We gotta have a conversation. But they believe, not only do we believe but they have come to a conclusion that they're safe from any kind of police intervention. There's a mountain of bikes over there in a marginal way. They didn't drop out of the sky. You know, those belong to someone and we let them sit there, which is testament to the fact that we don't feel we have a business to intervene with public safety. And they're chopping them up and painting them. So where does that come from? Where does the policy around, is that the police chief? Is that the city manager? Or is that the, is that the council? No, the police chief has come real late to this movie. Like we're almost at the epilogue. Can we blame him yet? No, no, we can't blame him. He's not eligible to be blamed right now. Okay, it comes out of a case called Martin v. Boise, Idaho. In that particular community, some unhoused individuals were denied housing because the three shelters in that community were run by religious denominations. And this group, the plaintiffs, said we need housing but we don't need religion. So therefore they were either unwilling to go in but had bad experiences and told not to come back. So Boise police officers arrested them for camping in public spaces. So it wound its way to the court, made it to the Ninth Circuit. And for lawyers we always smile because that's the most liberal of all the federal appellate circuits. And they took a look at it and the summary will tell you that they concluded that absent any shelter available, the camping ordinances couldn't be enforced, okay? And I suspect a lot of people read that in the first few pages and say, okay, we got it, but they didn't continue reading the case. I think the justices to their credit also recognize there could be circumstances where things other than allowing them to stay there could be accomplished by the police. For instance, they were real clear to say, you can camp but you can't erect semi-permanent structures. You know, says we put on pallet walls and flooring and bring in the stoves and the tiki bar that's down there. Those justices would have said, you know, you're taunting reasonableness now by doing that. As a consequence of that, police agencies, municipalities throughout the 10 Western states that are in that jurisdiction scrambled to create policies about how to have engagement with homeless people because many of them are a similar situation. They have more need than they have resource in terms of providing a place to sleep. That panic then ran east and found Augusta. And the legislature passed a statute announcing a protocol of what the police were to do if they confronted a non-housed individual committing a crime. And all of the steps that they outlined that had to be considered involved some sort of discretionary, diversionary act on part of the police. And in summary, kind of excuses the criminal conduct and let's focus on the need and send them on their way. It also directed the attorney general to do the same thing. I've served with Attorney General Frye. We were seat mates for six years. And he's a criminal lawyer and I was kind of like, wow, he didn't sign on to a suicide pack surrounding community safety, did he? Well, I got to the back pages of his protocol where really the good stuff always lingers. And he said, look, this is all important for the police to do. However, if there's a conclusion that the totality of the circumstances requires the police to do something more than there's something more traditional, then they should do it. But I would like them to have at least this protocol as part of their policy. So they don't ever get to say, I don't know what to do with a homeless person, that we've talked about and we have a criteria of things we should consider. But I don't think he gave them a grant of immunity. He didn't pronounce, look, anything done by homeless people is off limits to criminal justice. If you and I engage in certain conduct, we might expect a sanction. Two homeless people engage in a similar conduct. To my mind, they run an equal risk of sanction. So here we are, like, where does this leave? Portland, Maine, 2023, hundreds of homeless people on the street, more than we can house in a shelter, more than our social services can service. It's gonna get ugly. I think we're gonna have to commandeer some spaces somewhere or push the governor. I mean, you know, I called her out on felonizing heroin possession. I thought that was a ridiculous overreach by government. She didn't like me for it, but it wasn't about me being like. Remember, it's not about my best interest. You know, if this, it's about our community best interest. We have to call her out. She has to provide things. I long ago told the mayor and the manager she should at least give us national guard tents and field kitchens so we could serve these people and make them safe. And she said, I'm not gonna do that. I don't think she gets to have the luxury anymore, say I'm not gonna do that. And we gotta be loud about it. You know what I'll take again? What is she gonna tell me? What is she gonna tell me? Go home? Probably. Yeah, I'm okay with that. And if the certain public says, now Mark's the one acting imbalanced. All right, then you don't have to elect me or you don't have to reelect me. But I think somebody has to be able to stand up and tell her it's over. The traditional duck and shadow game is done. We have a real problem. It's not a city problem. We don't have the capacity. We can't keep going to the taxpayer and say, social service is going up another 40% next year. Cause they think it's a state problem. And actually this time, the days are right. They're right. And I wanna close with this. And what's really gonna press us, whether I'm the mayor or not, because I'll be here till the end of December, winter's coming. We don't have time anymore. It's kind of like we have people that drift on top of a boat that's sinking. We have a date certain now. It will sink when the first snow flies. We have to, and if we don't act, what does that mean? Who bears the responsibility? I mean, we can't study this to death. We don't need another commission. Some of my colleagues are calling for more committee work. That's great if we were San Diego, but we're not. And when the snow comes, the you and cry is palpable about whether or not we're gonna allow people to freeze to death. I would rather not see that. When I was sheriff, I offered the gym. I was told by some advocates, well, the optics on that are really bad. I go, are you kidding me? They're freezing out there. Did they use my gym? No. They struggled to find other places. And I said, look, if you come into the jail gym, I'll feed them. It'll be warm. We'll have cots, blankets. My medical staff will evaluate them for any acute needs they might have. And in the morning, they can all go about their business. But the optics were bad. We're beyond that now. Right, well, the optics are very bad. The optics are bad now, but we have to do something. And it might not be exactly what we all want done, but it's gotta get done. You can't just, you can't delay it. People are writing right now, do not clear the camp tomorrow. Do not, you know, just status quo everything. That doesn't bode well. I mean, we're in September and November can be pretty harsh under the right conditions. So I got a couple of quick ones. The city agenda over the last five years maybe longer has been set not by elected city councilors, but by direct democracy through referendums. Some of the biggest changes that have happened in terms of city policy have come through that process and not through your process. And is that a good way to run things? Is that you have any ideas of how to, should that be changed? Is it too easy? This council doesn't have an appetite to really address that. That's the short answer. My answer is there's no way to run a city. You can't do it by referendum. I respect the referendum process, but the question should be clear and it should be a change in navigation of the whole writ cloth of a new initiative and programs and an unknowing of how it has to connect with all other parts of city ordinance or practice. That's like marijuana. When people voted for that, it was clear. Yes or no. They left the regulatory machine to the state. That doesn't happen here. Referendums come with all the tales and they don't fit sometimes. And what I've tried to tell councilors is listen, if we wanna respect the referendum process, I'd like to do that as well. But maybe within 18 months of passage, if we identify that it's creating more havoc than solving an issue, then we should be able to intervene. Oh, they weren't too keen on that. And then we got it up to a super majority to intervene. That means seven of us would have to concur. And they're still not happy with that. What about going back out to the voters? Sending it back out to the voters? Yeah, making and proposing a revision. We could. There's nothing preventing us from doing that, but the point is you're just, to me, you're just coddling a cycle that's not helpful. Right? I mean, we might as well all stay home and just submit referenda on a timely basis and see how it all sticks on the wall. I don't think it's the way to move forward. And I think if we identify problems, I mean, we know we have a problem because almost 60% of our residents are tenants. We kinda deal with that on the margins. We gotta hit that head on. I'm willing to do that, but we can't begin by demonizing both sides of the conversation and try to short-circuit these referendums. I mean, there's certain constituencies in the city that like them because they feel disempowered taking it through normal city council process. And I can understand that. It's designed to be that way. We don't change overnight. It's incremental. I mean, every government is designed that way. But I think if you marshal it ahead of time, you can move it a lot faster than you'd think if you have that additional consensus in the community working with the council. So one of the issues that keeps coming up in referendums is short-term rentals. I think it's gonna, I might have lost count, but I think it's the third one is coming up on this ballot. Could even be the fourth. It could be the fourth. What's your take on the issue? Not necessarily the referendum, but the issue itself is- Short-term rentals. Short-term rentals, is it a problem? Are they, is the regulation sufficient? Is the enforcement sufficient? I mean, we have a whole bureaucracy now, the Housing Safety Office that didn't exist 10 years ago. They're trying to manage it. But I think, well, I did it in the last housing meeting. We're suggesting to pay a subsidy to get a short-term rental owner to come off that market and enter long-term rental market. To try to convince them first with a carrot rather than a stick. We love beating people up with sticks. If there's a new stick by God, give it to me, we'll use it somewhere. This is a carrot to say, look, here's an incentive to lead, take your property and place it in this category because our need as a community is much more significant for long-term rental than it is for short-term rental. I hope that those in that community will say, okay, it appears they actually might wanna work with us and we should sit down and do that with them. It's unfortunate that we've all decided to become mini-hoteliers. I mean, I think there's a room for that in the private sector. I think boarding houses used to provide some kind of resource to right people. That was the best they had, beat sleeping in a camp. But the idea of everybody's a vacation home, I don't think advances the best interest of the entire community. It maximizes the benefit to the owners. But I think they have to. We have to advocate with them that they should be good citizens and try to meet the best interest and can we strike a balance with them. That's why I started talking about that incentive just as a way to say, hey, look, we don't have it all right, but neither do you. But we can look at the outcomes and where do we think we share in creating that outcome and can we have a mutual interest in trying to shift that? Go ahead. Oh, do you think we have too many? I don't know how many we've got. I mean, to be honest, I mean, I live, I live in a regular single family neighborhood, single unit family. And my neighbor, who's a pretty well-known person, suddenly converted his house into a weekend bed and breakfast. I mean, we never knew about it. Did I have any complaint? No, but it kind of changes your understanding of what a neighborhood is about, you know? Cause neighbors would say, well, who are these people? You know, there were parties and things, never out of hand, but we didn't know we had adopted by de facto a commercial enterprise. You know, and I, if he wanted to rent it out, I wish he had talked to me cause there are a lot of potentially really good tenants out there who would have moved in, you know? My two daughters are tenants out in California and they're in their mid-30s and they told me, dad, you know, we're kind of coming to a place where we understand we will never own a home, that we will be in some kind of tenancy no matter where we go. That makes me sad because that was our big dream and our generation was we don't own a home. So if they're going to be in a world of tenants, then we have to make tenancy make sense, you know? And it should be a platform to exploit people that there's a long-term positive return on a long-term tenant, you know? Yeah. To rank choice ballot, you're gonna put yourself one? Yeah, of course. Who's number two? Me. You're gonna put yourself two? I mean, I don't understand. I might privately pick somebody two. I don't think I'll get to three. I just, I mean, I never sit in bed and say, if it's not me, who are the three best people who replace me? I'm not that difficult to replace. You know, so I think there's one person that I go, okay, if all things were equal and I lose, I could come to terms with them being the mayor. I could come to terms with anyone being the mayor because really I should know the public put them there. So it's my problem, not theirs. So, but no, I'm not gonna go one, two, three, four, five. I mean, that's, okay. Let me just let you wind up with, why do you wanna be the mayor? Why, and why should we vote for you? Because I love this city. And I think I've demonstrated that for 45 years. I've served in a lot of different capacities because I believe in Portland, the people who live here and I want it to be better than it was last year. I value this place. Seeing people grow, great families grow old, you know, and we all hold in common that Portland is what ties us together. I think I have the right personality to lead powerful egos and interests to a common goal. I spent a lifetime professionally and privately honing skills that I think can be brought to the forefront. I may not be the best choice in 10 years, but at this moment in time, I think I am the right choice. I'm gonna bring balance and reason, practicality, and pragmatism that you only learn those through trial and error. I've had my share of both and I think that that is a resource that I provide fellow counselors in the city. So that's why I wanna be mayor. Great, well, hey, thank you very much. It's a really interesting conversation. Thank you for running. Thanks, Greg, I appreciate it.