A City Council candidate wants to reduce Bangor’s spending, including by cutting funds used to provide services for homeless people in the city.
Colleen O’Neal said she is running for council because “the policies of the city have done nothing other than increase crime, increase drug trafficking, increase homelessness and increase taxes.”
A registered Republican, O’Neal made an unsuccessful bid for a Maine House seat last year and is now one of nine candidates running for three open seats on City Council.
O’Neal said she’s lived in Bangor for three and a half years. She has worked in emergency management and now serves as a case manager for the Penobscot Nation Healing to Wellness Court, which aims to help criminal offenders who have substance abuse or mental health issues.
She named crime as the number one issue she’d like to address as a councilor.
“I don’t feel it’s safe [downtown],” she said. “I would never bring my grandchildren down here.”
O’Neal’s platform features topics that have become major flashpoints in Bangor — homelessness and addiction — and have divided people based on how they see the city’s role in responding to these critical issues.
O’Neal chose the slogan “Bring Bangor Back” for her campaign because she feels that conditions in the city have gotten worse in the last five years.
“People want it back to where it was pre-COVID — lower taxes, lower crime and it’s safe for everyone,” she said.
O’Neal said she believes the city’s efforts to combat issues such as homelessness, drug use and HIV have been ineffective and the council should cut back on contracting with nongovernmental agencies to provide these services.
“This is going to sound controversial, but I think we need to cut back on the services, because there are tons of services for the homeless, but there’s no accountability,” she said. “I want to see some accountability and some numbers from these volunteer agencies, because right now it doesn’t look like they’re helping anyone at all.”
One way to address homelessness and drug use, O’Neal said, could be to use the city’s funds from opioid settlements to get people into rehab.
O’Neal expressed hesitations about the needle exchange programs provided by a few nonprofits in the city, saying she thinks the ongoing HIV outbreak is a sign that the programs aren’t working.
Syringe service programs are proven to reduce HIV and hepatitis C incidence by around 50%, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“They’ve in essence created a Mecca for the homeless,” she said when discussing the city’s existing policies. “So, with that comes drugs, with that comes crime.”
O’Neal named the school budget, the city’s contract with the group Streetplus to patrol downtown and property tax reevaluation as other areas where the city should consider cutting spending in order to lower taxes.
The city spent $230,000 for the Streetplus project and $750,000 to hire KRT Appraisal for property tax reevaluation, which O’Neal said she thinks should have been done more incrementally with the cost spread over many years.
She said she believes the City Council should have more oversight over the school department budget earlier in the budget process “so that the citizens aren’t paying for wasteful spending.” Bangor’s City Council typically reviews a school budget drafted by the school committee and may send it back to them with suggested changes.
O’Neal has made Bangor’s schools a part of her campaign, although most decisions around Bangor’s schools fall to the school committee, not the City Council.
Her campaign Facebook page encourages residents frustrated by “schools that continue to indoctrinate our children” to vote for her, and she told the Bangor Daily News that schools “need to get back to reading and writing and arithmetic” instead of teaching about gender and sexual orientation.
