Bangor City Councilor Wayne Mallar was caught on a hot mic in the council chambers Tuesday night complaining about a proposed school department budget hike and programs for “illegals” in local schools.
“The school department’s asking for a 10% increase. As far as I’m concerned, they get no increase,” Mallar said. He can then be heard discussing the department’s spending on multilingual teachers and services for students learning English.
“They can’t speak English, read English, or write English. It’s not a disability. We do not have to furnish. They’re probably all illegals anyway. That’s what the cultural center is supposed to be doing,” Mallar said.
The comments were broadcast live during the city’s Board of Ethics meeting. The committee convened Tuesday to determine whether Mallar had violated the city’s ethics code during a Historic Preservation Commission meeting in August. The board decided later that he had violated the code in that instance.
Mallar made the comments during a break in the public meeting when board members had left the room for an executive session. During that time, Mallar walked to the front of the room to talk to a city staff member who was seated next to one of several microphones.
Mallar stood by his comments in an interview Wednesday, saying he does not support a higher budget for the city’s schools and he does not think teachers here should teach English as a second language.
“Why are we teaching English as a second language and taking away from teaching English to our regular citizens? It seems we’re spending too much time on the homeless and the illegals and disregarding the citizenry,” he told the Bangor Daily News. “I don’t believe most of the illegals pay taxes, property taxes anyway.”
He thinks cultural centers should instead be responsible for teaching English and that a higher budget would harm the city, saying, “The senior citizens won’t be able to afford their houses, which no one seems to care about.”
Timothy Surrette, the school committee’s chair, said that while the committee has not yet finalized its budget, current plans would have them requesting a 6.43% hike from last year. He believes the department is planning to hire another multilingual teacher.
Surette called Mallar’s comments at the meeting “false, hateful, and deeply harmful to our multilingual learners and their families here in Bangor.”
The school department is required to teach English language learners, he noted, pointing to guidance from the Maine Department of Education, which states that under multiple federal and state laws, “school administrative units have an obligation to ensure that Multilingual/English learners have meaningful access to the district’s educational programs and services.”
Failing to provide language services could be considered discrimination under the Maine Human Rights Act, according to the education department.
Surrette added that the Bangor school department is “legally and morally responsible for ensuring all children receive education, including our multilingual learners.”
In Bangor schools, 5.4% of students are multilingual learners, according to 2024-25 data from the Maine DOE.
“The budget that we’ve put together represents the priorities of the Bangor school department in ensuring that all of our students receive the excellent academic program that we’re used to here in Bangor,” Surrette said.
Mallar told the BDN he wasn’t aware that the conversation had been broadcast and that it “shouldn’t have been.”
When board members left the room for their executive session, chair Shane Leonard warned audience members that the recording was still going.
“I would caution everyone in the room that it appears that the microphones are live for the meeting as they go. Anything said is still being recorded,” Leonard said.
That was about 25 minutes before Mallar’s remarks about the school budget.
A key point of discussion during the board’s deliberations Tuesday night revolved around a conversation Mallar had during a recess in an August meeting of the city’s Historic Preservation Commission. That conversation was not recorded during the break, making it unclear exactly what Mallar said. The board ultimately concluded that Mallar’s actions amounted to an ethics violation, although it does not have any power to impose consequences.
City Council Chair Susan Hawes did not immediately respond to a phone call requesting comment Wednesday.