I hope Portland City Hall decision-makers and elected officials are seriously questioning our new mayor’s first public initiative – to create a highly compensated assistant to support his office. Given this, it is astounding how former Mayor Michael Brennan managed his successful four-year term without similar help.

I’m sure Mayor Brennan would have appreciated some part-time administrative support in managing his schedule, meetings, emails and correspondence, but the city never budgeted any such assistance. Our last mayor had no paid staff at all.

While that was probably a disservice to him, our new mayor, Ethan Strimling, now posits that he cannot do his job without a high-level full-time assistant at a salary of up to $75,000.

Mayor Brennan created community coalitions to launch successful initiatives on homelessness, education and other pressing issues, wrangled with unrelenting antagonism toward Portland from the governor, raised millions of dollars for the city, averted an immigrant crisis and laid the foundation for a mayoral position that had not been in existence for nearly a century. He also appeared at an untold number of public events every week making speeches (that he wrote himself).

Surely it strains credulity to think that his successor cannot properly function without a full-time, highly paid assistant. And surely this was not what the Charter Commission envisioned when it recommended that we return to an elected mayor position.

While some level of administrative assistance is warranted to support the mayor and City Council, what is currently proposed seems to be excessive.

Is the city really supporting the idea that the role of the mayor is to be “listener-in-chief,” while another highly paid and highly skilled full-time professional is needed to actually perform the mayoral duties?

Mary Ellen Deschenes

Portland

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