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 member of Bangor’s ethics board is running for City Council in hopes of reducing fiscal waste and incorporating other towns into solutions to the area’s homelessness crisis.
John King, 43, has lived in Bangor since he retired from the military in 2018 and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in business.
The candidate said that if elected, he’d try to improve the city’s fiscal responsibility by identifying duplication in the budget.
“We’re spreading the wealth across too many groups that have the same plan,” King said, adding that he’d aim to find areas of duplication and offer those savings back to residents as a tax incentive based on income.
One example, he said, is the public health department’s housing support navigator and homeless response coordinator. He believes it’s worth considering whether those two positions could be combined into one.
King also said the city needs to bring other nearby towns into plans to fund homelessness resources, since many people travel to Bangor to access social services.
Bangor residents and political candidates often bemoan the burden that Bangor bears as a service center city for homelessness through the region, and the City Council named regional cost-sharing and collaboration as a top priority for this year, but it hasn’t yet gained much traction.
It’s unclear how King or any other candidate could successfully convince other towns to contribute funds. King said he’d start by requiring yearly reports from the city’s homeless shelters, syringe service providers and recovery organizations that could help provide data on where homeless people are from. Getting more concrete data could also help the city determine where it should direct its resources, he said.
King has been a member of the city’s Board of Ethics since March of this year. In that time, the group has voted on two issues regarding City Councilor Wayne Mallar’s conduct, deciding in both instances that an ethics code violation occurred.
The candidate said that work has shown him how negative and vindictive people can be when it comes to city politics, and how the council doesn’t hold all of its members to the same standards. He said going forward, he thinks the city government needs more compassion and teamwork.
“I’m fed up with the arguing, the negativity and just the councilors not listening to the people,” King said. He added that he’s happy to talk to anyone who reaches out to him, and he’ll respect their opinion regardless of whether he agrees.
King described himself as a moderate Democrat, saying, “I have an open mind when it comes to how things should be done.”
After completing two tours in Iraq, King said his military service gave him “the ability to be able to talk to anybody” and see things from different perspectives.
Besides the ethics board, he is also involved with the Friends Of Lower Kenduskeag Stream, a volunteer group that hosts regular cleanup events on the Kenduskeag Stream Trail.
On several key issues, King straddles the line between progressive candidates who generally support homelessness and harm reduction programs and conservative candidates who want to reduce those services.
King expressed some support for syringe service programs, saying, “there’s proven data and facts that say that done right, it can be beneficial to the people who are using it.”
That said, he’d like to see “more accountability” for needle exchanges. King said he thinks Wabanaki Public Health and Wellness, a syringe service provider that is contracted to provide certain syringe collection and disposal services, should “be more proactive going around the city and looking” for syringe litter.
The agreement between the nonprofit and the city tasks the group with responding to community reports of syringe waste, emptying public sharps disposal boxes, disposing of syringe waste collected by the city government, educating about proper disposal and distributing syringe disposal materials.
While some candidates want to impose a one-for-one restriction on needle exchange programs, King said at a candidate forum last week hosted by the Concerned Citizens of Bangor group that he supports restricting syringe exchange ratios gradually, on a person-by-person basis.
King also said he’s generally supportive of the Yellen Pines supportive housing development for homeless residents as an idea, but added, “I don’t think that the way the city did it was right.”
He said he thinks the council should have determined what conditions would be placed on the tax reimbursement deal for the project before voting to approve the deal. He also said he thinks the 75% reimbursement for the development’s property taxes was too high.
“I’m not in favor of that amount. I think that’s a little much,” he said.
King noted that he doesn’t attend City Council meetings in person and watches them online instead because of his position on the ethics board, as he believes participating and speaking during public comment could create conflicts if related matters later come up on the ethics board.