The hottest local election in Portland this fall is the race for an at-large seat on the City Council, a three-way contest between a former state legislator and sitting councilor, an immigrant from Ghana who has served on the School Board, and a homeless man with Libertarian views who has camped in the woods for the past five years.

Incumbent Jon Hinck, an attorney who is finishing his first three-year term on the council, is looking to continue working on environmental and sustainability issues but faces an aggressive challenge from School Board member Pious Ali, a youth and community engagement specialist at the Muskie School of Public Service, who is eager to be the voice of immigrants and other marginalized residents who feel intimidated by city government.

Meanwhile, Matthew Coffey, a homeless landscaper and arborist’s apprentice, is looking to inject his Libertarian values into the council and change the way the city approaches homelessness.

Hinck is a former state representative who originally planned to run for a state Senate seat, but decided to run for re-election to the council after missing the deadline to run for the Legislature. By then, Ali was already off and running for Hinck’s council seat. Coffey ran unsuccessfully for a council seat last year and said he is determined to keep trying.

All three candidates say they are concerned about Portland’s hyper-competitive housing market, which has experienced an influx of high-end condominiums and luxury apartments, making it more difficult for low-income residents to remain in the city.

The City Council oversees a municipal budget of $236 million and sets the bottom line for school spending.

PIOUS ALI

Ali said he’s running for the at-large seat to make local government more accessible to all Portland residents, especially its growing population of immigrants. The 47-year-old Pearl Street resident supports efforts to raise the minimum wage and believes the city should borrow money to upgrade its substandard elementary schools.

Although he serves as an at-large member of the School Board, Ali said many in the immigrant community call upon him to help navigate the bureaucracy at City Hall. That role prompted him to seek the council seat.

“At this point, there is a need for an alternative voice on the City Council – somebody who knows how to bring people together and who knows how to have a difficult conversation and is bold enough to do it,” Ali said. “I think I am that person. I have a history of having done that.”

If elected, he would become the first African-born Muslim to serve on the council. But Ali said that doesn’t define him as a candidate.

“I am somebody who has the passion to serve his community and just happens to be an immigrant and just happens to be a black man and also happens to be a Muslim,” he said.

Ali, who worked as a photojournalist in Ghana before coming to the United States in 2000, said he’d like to see the council break from its tradition of only meeting in City Hall and hold more informal conversations with residents in their own neighborhoods at times that are convenient for them. He convinced the School Board to do this on three Saturdays this year.

He supports the statewide ballot initiative to increase the minimum wage. He believes Portland took a good first step by raising the wage citywide this year, but should have also increased the wage for tipped workers.

Ali, a youth and engagement specialist at the University of Southern Maine’s Muskie School of Public Service, said he’d continue to focus on education if elected. He’d like to see the Portland Arts and Technology High School team up with businesses, providing students with internship and apprenticeship opportunities.

He supports a $70 million bond to upgrade the city’s elementary schools, but is also supportive of the ongoing effort to reduce the amount to be borrowed. Ideally, the state would help pay for the repairs, he said, but the city should have a Plan B if that doesn’t happen.

“We have to come up with something that is fair to taxpayers and creates an equitable learning environment for our kids,” he said.

Ali supports renter-protection measures proposed by the mayor that would limit rent increases, cap the number of units in a building that could be cleared of tenants for a renovation, and require landlords to accept people on housing vouchers. However, those are only short-term solutions, he said.

The city also needs to take the long view so it can find ways to create safe and quality housing for everyone, Ali said. That begins by bringing everyone to the table, including renters, landlords, real estate developers, immigrants, homeless advocates and senior citizens.

If elected, Ali said he would initiate a community conversation about the elected mayor position. The current system, which maintains a full-time city manager and full-time elected mayor, doesn’t seem to be working because roles and responsibilities are not clear, he said.

“We all know it’s not working,” he said.

Ali has received a slew of endorsements from elected officials, including eight School Board members and city councilors Jill Duson and Edward Suslovic.

MATTHEW COFFEY

Coffey, 39, had been living for about five years in the so-called Tent City, a homeless encampment behind the Lowe’s store on Brighton Avenue, and even kept vegetable gardens and chickens on the wooded property. But this summer, police cleared the unauthorized encampment. The small cabin that he built from scrap wood was torn down, forcing him to “couch surf,” Coffey said.

As a Libertarian, Coffey is opposed to government intervention in people’s personal lives. He opposes increases in the minimum wage and so-called “nanny state” regulations that prohibit smoking in public parks and ban people who are under age 21 from buying tobacco.

He believes the council needs more diversity, as well as the voice of an “average Joe.”

“The City Council already has plenty of members who are people just like them,” Coffey said. “They don’t have somebody who has lived with the poor and homeless community and knows their needs and knows what needs to be done.”

Coffey believes the city should change the way it addresses homelessness. He believes low-barrier services create “an entitlement mentality.”

People staying at the shelter or accessing services at Preble Street should be required to help out by either cleaning the place or handing out towels and sheets, Coffey said. That would free up more resources for case managers to help people stabilize their lives. The city also should provide vocational training so people can get jobs, he said.

Coffey opposes tax breaks for developers. Instead, the city should provide tax incentives to local businesses who hire homeless people and to landlords who keep their rents affordable. An example of a landlord incentive would be waiving the city’s new stormwater fee, or providing the building with free trash bags, he said.

He would also like to see Preble Street, a nonprofit that operates a day shelter and soup kitchen, put a vegetable garden on its roof. People using services could plant seeds and weed the garden, he said, and the food could be served in the soup kitchen.

Portland has a “serious problem” with gentrification, he said, warning that the people who sweep floors, cook and serve food, and clean toilets are being forced out of the city. However, he doesn’t think heavy-handed regulations, such as rent control, will work.

This is Coffey’s second official run for City Council. Last year, he challenged longtime Councilor Nicholas Mavodones for an at-large seat, earning 2,479 votes, or 16 percent, in a three-way race.

“I intend to continue running until I am a councilman,” he said.

JON HINCK

Hinck said that if elected, he will continue to work on issues to improve the lives of Portland residents. The 62-year-old Pine Street resident said his accomplishments include helping then-Mayor Michael Brennan pass a local minimum wage, and the successful initiatives to add solar panels to an old landfill, institute a 5-cent fee on disposable bags and ban plastic foam containers.

In the next term, Hinck said he’d like to continue working on sustainability and housing issues. Chief among those are efforts to regulate pesticides in the city and to require commercial building owners to disclose how much energy they use, he said.

Currently, a task force is studying ways to regulate synthetic pesticides. That group will report back to the council’s Environmental and Sustainability Committee, which Hinck chairs.

Hinck said he is hoping the group will recommend an ordinance – with enforcement provisions – to protect kids, pets, wildlife, pollinators and Casco Bay.

“I would like to see us reduce the misuse and overuse of pesticides in Portland and become a community that uses pesticides as a last resort when nothing else works,” he said.

Hinck said residents should be able to take action against neighbors for “chemical trespass.”

“If someone uses toxic pesticides and they drift or run off into your property, you would have a right of action with damages, provided in ordinance,” he said. “So far that has not gotten traction in the task force.”

On energy efficiency, he also would like to see enforcement of an existing state law that requires landlords to disclose to tenants the energy usage of their apartments, so they can consider that information before deciding whether they can afford an apartment.

“That provides incentives to landlords to insulate the units they rent,” he said.

Hinck has endorsed a series of proposals – including Mayor Ethan Strimling’s proposed ordinance – to increase housing security for low-income residents. He also has proposed a requirement that landlords provide financial assistance to low-income tenants who are displaced by renovations.

Thus far, the five-member Housing Committee has not shown support for Strimling’s plan, but would like to study Hinck’s more.

In the long term, the city should look at ways to relax its zoning laws so more housing can be built. “If you allow greater density you are limiting sprawl, which allows us to have more open space nearby,” he said.

Hinck frequently expresses concerns about property taxes and has yet to vote in support of a budget. He supports some level of investment – roughly half of the proposed $70 million bond – in the city’s elementary schools, but thinks the state should also contribute.

Hinck has been endorsed by city councilors Mavodones, David Brenerman, Belinda Ray and Spencer Thibodeau and by the Portland Education Association.

 

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