Next week, residents of Portland, Lewiston and Auburn will cast their votes for mayor. Election Day will follow a campaign season during which incumbents and mayoral candidates have tried to make the case that they’re best suited to lead and implement a particular vision for their city.
Not in Bangor, Maine’s third largest city.
Here, voters will make their choices to fill three City Council seats. When a new council is seated, the nine councilors will choose a chairman from their ranks to assume the largely symbolic leadership post for a year. Councilors will surely come out of the election with ideas to help Bangor grow, but none will have a strong mandate to implement them and build support around them. Governing will be left to nine councilors of essentially equal stature, who are more likely to let an idea stall in committee for lack of clear support than let it flourish.
It’s time for Bangor to rethink its lack of a popularly elected mayor.
Four years ago, Portland held its first popular election for mayor after nearly a century under the council-manager form of government used by Bangor. The contest drew 15 candidates — and with them came the energy of 15 candidates with different ideas for their city’s future. In the end, voters settled on Michael Brennan, effectively endorsing his vision, his priorities and the leadership style he promised. Four years later, voters have a chance to revisit their choice.
While Maine is known for its rural character, it’s a state whose economic success is inextricably linked with the success of its cities and the metropolitan areas they anchor. Those metropolitan areas have come to represent an ever-growing portion of the state’s economy and population.
At the same time, Maine’s cities face a political and cultural environment that favors rural areas. State economic development policies and education and transportation funding models have largely reflected this rural favoritism. So have state resistance to prioritizing public transit and the refusal to allow cities to levy local option sales taxes to support their status as service centers.
What does this have to do with a popularly elected mayor?
Maine’s cities need strong advocates who can make the case to the rest of Maine, including policymakers in Augusta, that their growth benefits everyone — and, by extension, make the case that the policies that help cities grow help all of Maine grow.
Locally, a popularly elected mayor can articulate a long-term vision for a city and engage residents in a conversation about their city’s future. That mayor would have the authority to represent the entire community when trying to woo an employer to the area or collaborating with other towns and cities on shared priorities. That vision and that leadership style effectively go to referendum when the city selects a mayor.
Portland’s mayor — who has few day-to-day responsibilities specified in the city charter — earns a full-time salary with benefits, ensuring he devotes his full professional attention to his city. At the same time, the retention of a city manager ensures day-to-day operations continue under the eye of a hired professional. Bangor could consider the same structure. It might be hard to justify a mayor’s salary in a tight budget, but the lack of commitment to paying a mayor would limit the pool of candidates such a job would attract.
Bangor abandoned the popularly elected mayor in the 1930s in favor of a city manager-council form of government, according to local historian Richard Shaw. Bangor made the change at that time along with many other U.S. cities implementing Progressive Era “good government” reforms.
The Queen City has revisited the debate about a popularly elected mayor from time to time and decided against it. But the heightened importance of cities to Maine’s economy and the importance of their success to Maine’s future has never been clearer.
It’s time Bangor asserted its importance to the rest of Maine.
