Rick Fournier this week became only the second person in 80 years chosen to serve two years in a row as chair of the Bangor City Council. He also won his second year as council chair in a divided vote, a departure from the norm of the nine-member council unanimously backing its leader.
Fournier, however, isn’t taking the divided vote personally, and he doesn’t see it as a sign of discord on the council. He said he’s happy to have another year to work on four main priorities for the city.
Fournier said he understood Monday’s 5-4 vote choosing him as chair as a statement about some councilors’ desire to change how they choose a chair, rather than a sign of a divided council. There’s long been criticism of the chair selection process, including by councilors, as one that happens behind closed doors. That criticism came up again on Monday.
“I can’t imagine they think I didn’t do a good job. They just want a different process,” he said in an interview with the Bangor Daily News on Thursday. “I didn’t take it personally.”
While he understands why other councilors want to revisit how council chairs are selected and isn’t opposed to it, Fournier said the process of opening and changing the city charter would be long and involved when the city should focus on tackling larger challenges such as affordable housing and homelessness first.
“Also, when the whole council chooses a chair, to me it helps unify the board to work together,” he said.
The last time someone served as chair for more than one year consecutively was in 1941 and 1942, when Frank Young held the position, according to a historical list of city councilors maintained by the city.
Fournier said he wanted to have another year as chair to continue working on four priorities: reducing homelessness, increasing affordable housing, bolstering economic development and distributing the city’s more than $20 million in federal COVID-19 relief funds.
“I think it’s important for Bangor to keep those four things top of mind,” Fournier said. “I just want to make Bangor better — it’s as simple as that.”
Of those priorities Fournier said the connected tasks of expanding affordable housing and shrinking the city’s growing homeless population is the largest and most complex, and not a problem the city can solve alone.
“We help by bringing people together, but there’s a lot more help we need from the state and federal governments,” he said.
In the coming year, Fournier said Bangor residents can expect to see homeless encampments that have appeared throughout the city shrink in size while others may disappear altogether.
“It seems like the city isn’t being proactive because there’s a growing population, which is incredibly frustrating and no one wants to see it,” he said. However, “the city has been proactive. The health department is going out on a daily basis communicating with people in the encampments to get people transitioned to appropriate housing.”
Aiding people experiencing homelessness often involves helping them access mental health and substance use disorder treatment resources, Fournier said, which is a slow process involving city personnel and multiple service providers.
“It’s going to be slow because it’s a one-on-one process, but you need those small victories in order to get larger victories,” he said.