The Bangor Daily News is profiling all 12 Bangor City Council candidates ahead of the election this fall. Read more coverage of Bangor’s local election here.
A business owner running for Bangor City Council wants to prioritize strengthening the local economy and cutting back on what he sees as non-essential city services.
Anthony Cote, 43, owns his own company, Maine Construction Solutions, and was born in Bangor and has lived here for most of his life.
“I’m just not super happy with the way things are going in Bangor,” he said as the reason why he’s running for council.
Cote’s top issue is “making Bangor business friendly,” he said, noting it’s an area where he thinks the city has been lacking. From experience, he’s seen that it’s difficult to build in Bangor due to regulations and permitting, he added.
He believes the budgeting skills and large network he’s gained through owning a business would help him manage the city’s budget as a councilor.
“Running a company, if you don’t spend your money wisely, you don’t stay long,” Cote said. “Things have to be result-driven. If you just throw money at that thing and hope it changes, it doesn’t always change.”
Cote is also a member of Black Bear BNI, a business networking organization, and is involved in leadership at his church. He declined to share his political party affiliation but described himself as a centrist.
The candidate said that collecting signatures to get on the ballot was harder than he expected because he realized many of his friends had moved out of city limits.
“I want to say, ‘Let’s fix it. Let’s stay here. Let’s build here,’” he said.
Cote said he’d like to adjust the city’s approach to homelessness and drugs, including by further restricting the number of needles someone can get when visiting a syringe exchange program.
“I don’t think that I would promote enabling them to stay addicted. I’d much prefer them to get better [and] become good productive members of society,” he said, adding that he sees syringe distribution as enabling.
“I’m not an addict, so I don’t know if it’s necessary, but I personally don’t feel that it’s necessary to have a 100 to 1 exchange,” Cote said.
He also said he’d like to investigate the police department’s homelessness crisis protocol, which suggests that officers first offer services to homeless people who have engaged in certain offenses, such as trespassing or possession of scheduled drugs, as a preferred approach instead of arresting or citing the person.
“I think that it’s crazy that there’s different rules for different people based on housing situations,” Cote said.
He added that the city should prioritize cleaning up syringe litter and suggested it should do so using the funds meant for syringe service programs, saying, “I think that the city needs to absolutely go clean it up and whatever that cost is should be taken out of whatever money we are funding the syringes with.”
Generally, Maine’s syringe service programs are funded by the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, not municipalities.
Cote also said he’d look for places to cut back the city’s budget.
“We should be more concerned with the elderly being taxed out of their houses than we should be with other pet projects, if you would. So, I think that we should focus on the important things that the city needs to do, like police, fire, safety, things like that,” he said. “Anything extra the city is doing to help people, any sort of nonprofits or NGOs that are receiving money…any of them shouldn’t be funded by raising taxes.”
He also said he didn’t think taxpayers would mind the city spending money on homelessness if the tax base was expanded such that property taxes didn’t go up as a result.
Cote estimated that he’s attended between 10 and 12 council meetings in the last year and said he’d plan to engage with residents on social media if elected. From what he’s seen of the council, he believes the city’s current representatives have wasted a lot of time lately.
“I would rather focus on building the economy back up in Bangor than solving all the little issues, and I feel like that’s going to help solve the issues,” he said.