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 who is involved in local progressive organizations wants to focus on community-building and implement policies like a rent freeze and a ban on automatic license plate readers.
Andrei Yermakov, 67, moved to Bangor from Newcastle about a year and a half ago. He’s retired but currently working a short-term gig for the Maine People’s Alliance, one of the state’s most prominent progressive political organizations.
He’s running because of what he sees as a “lack of civil discourse” in local politics and said community building would be his top priority if elected.
“This has the potential to be such a vibrant, thriving community,” Yermakov said, adding that there are “a lot of wonderful things going on in Bangor that are just in their own little spheres, and the Venn diagram could be much bigger.”
Yermakov is a registered Democrat but said, “I find things that are positive with both parties. I find things that are negative with both parties. I work with both,” adding, “I’m looking to work across the aisle.”
Yermakov acknowledged that some residents may be skeptical of him because he worked for Graham Platner’s U.S. Senate campaign before Platner withdrew in July following a rape allegation. Yermakov noted that Platner’s success at the polls in June signaled strong support for his progressive policy platform.
Besides his work with Maine People’s Alliance, Yermakov is also involved with People Powered Maine, Indivisible Bangor, and Food and Medicine. He hosted a joint campaign event with Adam Baker, another progressive candidate.
He described himself as a “long-term union guy” with experience negotiating contracts on both the union and management sides in his career managing businesses, during which he said he had success growing profits and working collaboratively.
Yermakov said one of his favorite things about Maine is that “people help each other out” and he wants to bring more of that mindset to the council. “Unfortunately, what’s happened with our national discourse is now, we see a microcosm of that at the Bangor City Council,” he said, noting that some residents insult councilors and each other during public comment and leave before council meetings are finished.
He said he’d like to see the city share more community events on its calendar online and encourage residents to interact with new people.
The candidate knocks doors across the state as a canvasser for Maine People’s Alliance and said the biggest issues he hears about from voters are property taxes and homelessness.
On those issues and others that come before the council, Yermakov said it sometimes feels like everyone wants change but is also quick to shoot down proposed solutions.
“There will never be a perfect solution,” he said, adding that he would try to support the solutions that will be the best for the most people.
Yermakov sympathizes with common complaints about syringe litter in Bangor and said he wants the city to install more sharps disposal containers to get needles off the ground.
Unlike many other candidates with syringe litter concerns, Yermakov said he supports needle exchange programs, pointing to the ongoing HIV outbreak in Penobscot County as a reason why access to clean syringes is needed.
He also said that he’d like to reduce drug use in the city, “but we have to work on the homelessness first.”
Yermakov is a supporter of the Yellen Pines development in the works that will house chronically homeless residents. “Yellen Pines is not a perfect project. There will never be perfect projects. But it’s a good start. It’ll get 30 people off the streets, and that’s a good start,” he said.
Although the project has been controversial, he noted that the property where it’s being built currently generates no tax revenue for the city, so even the partial tax reimbursement that was approved by the council will generate more revenue for the city.
He noted that he’s struggled with substance use and been homeless in the past, but he overcame those challenges because “someone helped me up.”
Yermakov also said he wants to shift the way community members talk about homeless residents.
“What hurts me deeply is a lot of people, a lot of residents and a lot of home owners will be treating or discussing the homeless as if they’re a subhuman species,” he said. “They’re not a rat that needs to be exterminated.”
In terms of housing policy, Yermakov wants Bangor to implement a rent freeze and said he thinks it would pay off in the long run by encouraging people to stay here and move here, despite the short-term hit to property owners.
He said he’d also be in favor of a property tax freeze and wants the city to put more information on its website directing residents to relief programs they can apply to through the state.
Yermakov also shared several ideas for retaining workers in the city, including adding apprenticeship programs to the high school, requiring bus drivers to work for the city for a certain number of years after completing the training that the city pays for, and working with local medical institutions to offer programs that will keep their workers in the area longer.
He also said he’d like to propose a ban on automatic license plate readers, a policy that other nearby towns are considering amid widespread fears about government surveillance.
Yermakov said that he attends most city council meetings, aside from this spring and summer when his work hours overlapped with the meetings.
To improve communication with residents, he said he’d like to set up a regular office hours-type gathering where he could sit in a local business and talk to residents who may be more comfortable speaking one-on-one than bringing their concerns to a public meeting.
Similarly, he said he’d want to form relationships with his fellow councilors if elected by meeting one-on-one to discuss “where we could find common ground.”