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 Bangor City Council candidate with concerns about affordability wants the council to prioritize fiscal responsibility.
Jennifer McGinley Maskala was born in Bangor and moved back here 18 years ago. She worked in healthcare before joining the Wild Blueberry Commission of Maine in 2022 as its programs director.
She emphasized fiscal responsibility in her interview with the Bangor Daily News and noted that she has a master’s degree in business administration and manages budgets over $1 million as part of her job. Her campaign slogan is “spend less, do more.”
McGinley Maskala declined to share her age or political party affiliation and said she decided to run for council because of her long family history in the area.
“My family’s from here and I see a direction that Bangor’s going in and I don’t like the direction that I see, and I know I can do something about it,” she said.
If elected, she said her top priority would be for the council to “get back to the basics” and focus on fundamental government responsibilities such as repairing aging sewer systems and school facilities. She said she wants to reduce city spending to address rising property taxes and affordability concerns from adults on fixed incomes.
“If families are on a budget, why shouldn’t city council? We all have to pinch our pennies and do more with less, and I think city council should too,” McGinley Maskala said.
She noted the recent renovation of downtown’s Pickering Square as an example of what she sees as unnecessary spending, saying she thinks the city should avoid spending on things that are “nice to have” but not essential.
McGinley Maskala said she thinks the city should reexamine the Yellen Pines development in the works that will house chronically homeless residents because she sees the 30-year tax reimbursement deal for the facility as a “huge commitment.”
She also expressed that many Bangor residents feel like “it’s not safe here anymore” and noted concerns about syringe litter in public spaces around the city.
She suggested that the city could require syringe service providers to print a label on every needle they distribute to make it easy to identify which provider a particular needle came from.
Then, a provider could be fined if city workers find syringes left on the ground by someone who obtained the syringe from that location, “so we can hopefully be assured to get them back and not have them dropped in our park and dropped on the sidewalks,” she said.
McGinley Maskala said she thinks issues like public drug use and syringe litter are deterring people from living in the city and that in order to attract more residents, businesses and jobs, Bangor should “start by cleaning up some of the drug issues that are here.”
In order to bring more businesses to Bangor, she also suggested attracting data centers to the city that could provide jobs for young people. While she supports the temporary ban on data center construction that the council instituted so staff could brainstorm potential regulations, McGinley Maskala suggested that Bangor has the infrastructure to support a data center and it’s worth considering the idea.
As a councilor, she said she’d have an “open door policy” and work to be approachable for residents. She said she’s attended some council meetings but did not specify a number when asked how many and said she watches a lot of them online.
“People are very upset because they feel like they’re not being heard,” she said of the way the council’s been going lately.