PORTLAND – For Portland to succeed in the 21st century, we need a real mayor to lead our City Council. Question 1 would do just that.

I didn’t always feel this way. For much of my 45 years in Portland, I thought things were fine.

But having spent six years on our City Council, including a one-year term as ceremonial mayor, I have come to believe that our system is broken.

It’s broken because we are governed by a nine-member City Council with a ceremonial mayor and committees that turn over annually.

This makes it nearly impossible to start an initiative lasting more than 12 months.

The fact that city policies are set by a committee also lends itself to division and stagnation. How often have you seen good ideas fail because councilors could not agree on a direction, and no one had authority to lead?

Our council is also part time, with members holding down full-time day jobs. As a result, you can’t find an elected official in City Hall during the day.

Instead, council action happens at evening meetings stretching out over months, too slow to react in a fast-moving world.

As a substitute for action, the council appoints task forces, studies issues and creates reports. These reports end up on a shelf gathering dust while good opportunities pass us by.

Our city is like a giant ship cruising along with an undersized rudder. As we drift, taxes keep going up while services go down, and good projects that would improve our economy float past us.

In 2008, Portland voters overwhelmingly supported formation of a charter commission to study Portland’s government.

The vote occurred shortly after a high-profile failure over the Maine State Pier.

After a year of work, the commission recommended that Portland establish a full-time, elected mayor with a four-year term — the rudder to Portland’s ship.

A four-year term allows our mayor to start and complete initiatives.

A full-time mayor means Portland will have a leader with enough time to work with new and existing businesses looking to bring jobs to Portland — something business relocation specialists regularly complain is lacking in Portland.

Most importantly, the commission established that our mayor would need to be directly elected by a majority of the voters, not appointed by nine members of the council.

This ensures that citizens will have a say in Portland’s direction and that our mayor will be accountable to voters. This is why neighborhood leaders support Question 1.

Of course, there are a handful of critics. They claim that our new mayor would still be “ceremonial.”

This is false. In fact, Question 1 would actually give our mayor more authority than nearly every other of the 1,000 American cities with a similar form of government.

These new authorities include the formal power to appoint council committees, set the council agenda, provide policy guidance to the budget, veto the budget, oversee the hiring and performance of the city manager and guide the implementation of city policy by the manager. And our mayor still would have a vote on the council.

Others claim we can’t afford a real mayor, and they invent costs that aren’t there.

But that’s like saying that our ship should not have a rudder or our football team should not have a quarterback.

With a real mayor, Portland will have the necessary leadership to grow our economy, create new government efficiencies and leverage more resources from Augusta and Washington.

If even one moderate-sized project occurs, it will forever pay for our mayor with enough left over to lower taxes or improve city services.

For an up-front cost of $1 per person, it’s an investment that will pay us back many times over.

Local business groups understand this and support Question 1.

Finally, some have complained about ranked choice voting, a method that is becoming increasingly popular around the country, for two good two reasons:

It reduces the risk that a “fringe” candidate gets elected, and it is the least costly way to ensure that the mayor has support from a majority of voters.

Ranked choice is also used for Oscar and Heisman Trophy voting.

What critics conveniently forget, however, is that Question 1 is about restoring your right to have a direct say in where Portland is heading and who is going to lead us there.

This right was taken away 87 years ago; it’s time to take it back.

Question 1 is an opportunity Portland cannot afford to pass up. It’s your choice.

 

– Special to The Press Herald