A Bangor business owner is running for City Council in hopes of combating crime and making city government more transparent.
James Gallagher, who owns Salty Brick Market and Bangin’ Whoopie downtown, has become known for his “Hey Bangor, we have a problem” campaign, which he started after sprinkler system damage from an upstairs fire temporarily shut down his market last year.
Gallagher’s platform also includes ideas like starting a city-run homeless shelter and making bus drivers full-time city employees so Bangor can add more days of bus service.
He said he believes Bangor residents too often conflate the issues of homelessness and crime — two topics that are shaping up to be central to the City Council election this fall. Nine candidates are vying for three open seats.
“I’m the only candidate I think that knows what Main Street Bangor deals with on a daily basis. I’m down here at 4:00 a.m. on Main Street,” Gallagher said. “And it’s very interesting to hear a lot of people talk about the issues of downtown and the things that we deal with, but they don’t even come down here.”
When asked what he would do as a City Councilor to address crime concerns, Gallagher said the solution would be “to listen to everybody,” adding that he sees some of the sitting councilors as very disconnected from the issues affecting Bangor.
Gallagher, who is not enrolled in a political party, has lived in Bangor his whole life and currently resides in the Little City neighborhood.
“I think I’m one of the few candidates running that was born here and has lived here their whole life,” he said.
He proposed a new homeless shelter with a community center similar to the one the Health Equity Alliance opened before the nonprofit shut down — but this time, it would be run by Bangor’s government, which Gallagher thinks would be more effective since the city would have more oversight.
He also said he thinks the city needs a task force to do outreach and help homeless people find shelter, especially in the winter.
While projects like a new shelter could cost a lot of money, Gallagher said he’d hope to be creative in finding new funding streams in order to provide services while still lowering taxes.
“Let’s raise money, let’s do more events,” he said. “There’s definitely multiple streams of revenue that we can look at.”
Gallagher also said he wants to loosen regulations, such as parking space requirements, that can make it hard to build housing, and to further restrict Airbnbs and other short-term rentals in the city to free up space for much-needed longer-term rentals.
Short-term, non-hosted rentals are capped at 1% of total units in the city, which was 153 units when the rule was implemented in 2023.
Multiple candidates, including Gallagher, have made improving the city’s Community Connector bus system part of their campaigns as well. Bangor scaled back bus schedules last month after cutting Saturday service as the city struggles to recruit and retain enough bus drivers.
“What I’m told is they’re part-time employees, working full-time hours with no benefits,” Gallagher said, noting that he thinks the lack of weekend service is hurting business downtown. “I think we need to start paying these people a living wage to drive our buses.”
He also suggested finding outside organizations that might help sponsor bus services, such as churches that may benefit from Sunday bus schedules that could take people to religious services, and adding commercial driver’s license training to the curriculum at the United Technologies Center, where he went to school.
Gallagher also noted that he thinks the city should do a better job of communicating with residents about city programs and what their tax dollars are being used for, saying his top priority as a councilor would be “accountability and transparency.”
