Rj Nichols has tried for five years to get the speed limit lowered or a speed bump installed in his Bangor neighborhood.
Nichols says he’s seen several kids nearly hit by speeding cars on Deer Isle Road, and he has even complained to city hall in person. But nothing has happened.
Most people in this situation might ask a neighbor on the City Council for help with fixing a municipal problem. A councilor has a vote and can directly influence decisions.
But none of Bangor’s councilors live in Nichols’ neighborhood.
It’s been more than a decade since anyone from Capehart has served on the council. The area is the largest public housing site north of Boston and has one of the lowest median incomes in the city.
“We definitely need somebody from our neighborhood in City Council to deal with this,” Nichols said.
In his view, the Bangor City Council “couldn’t care less what happens to anybody out here.”
Bangor’s system of representation is an outlier in the state.
Maine’s third-largest city is the only major municipality without dedicated voting wards. Instead, the nine seats on the Bangor City Council are filled on an at-large basis, meaning councilors are elected by the city’s entire voter base.
Under this system, residents of Bangor’s poorest neighborhoods go years without representation. While the City Council is meant to act in the best interest of all residents, its members are often congregated in more affluent communities. That makes them less likely to understand the unique concerns of people outside of those areas, who may not feel empowered to come forward to councilors who can’t relate to their experiences.
Several people who live in these areas told the Bangor Daily News it would be easier to share their concerns with a councilor who lives in their community. Some believe specific issues, such as expanding bus service, have been neglected because the most affected neighborhoods don’t have a voice on the council.
A BDN analysis of more than 100 addresses of City Council candidates — including more than 40 who were successfully elected — over 20 of the last 25 years found only one from Capehart: former longtime Councilor Pat Blanchette, who served until 2015. Outer Ohio, Bangor Gardens and Judson Heights also rarely have councilors who live there.
About 20 councilors — nearly half — in that period have served from Fairmount, Little City and the Tree Streets, areas closer to downtown known to be more affluent.
“When I was on council, there was another councilor that lived directly across the street from me,” said former Councilor Sarah Nichols, who lived on High Street at the time, just outside of the city’s downtown area.
The BDN created a database of candidate addresses through a combination of Freedom of Access Act requests for campaign finance reports and sample ballots found in its archives and on social media. This data is not comprehensive because local governments in Maine do not retain records of sample ballots, nor does the secretary of state’s office. The map is missing some addresses for candidates who ran in 2002, 2011, 2012, 2016 and 2017.
This system of representation is “inherently undemocratic,” Councilor Joe Leonard said.
Leonard is one of several current and former councilors who have called for an overhaul of the council’s structure to elect some or all of its members based on a ward system, where certain parts of the city would have designated representatives.
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That system is already used in Maine’s other large cities. Portland uses a hybrid version with five councilors elected from particular districts and three at-large, while all seven of Lewiston’s councilors serve a specific ward.
“Because we don’t have a true representative, since everyone is at large, you have no one that you can call and complain to,” said Peter Ramsay, who lives off of Davis Road in a neighborhood he calls Magnolia Hill, adjacent to Capehart.
“They’re in their own little world,” he said of the council, adding that he thinks if they each had a smaller constituency, they’d be able to build relationships with a large network of people within their neighborhood.
Dan Tremble, who served on the City Council for 15 years, said neighbors would often walk into his business, Fairmount Market, and share concerns that he could then pass along to the council.
Although the councilors represent the whole city, residents of areas where none live might not feel there’s anybody they can call about an issue in their neighborhood, said Tremble, who is now a Penobscot County commissioner.
Several residents near the Outer Ohio and Capehart areas said they rarely or never have people running for City Council knock on their doors during election season, when candidates and volunteers fan out across the city to meet voters and hear their concerns.
Robert Zack, 80, told the BDN he’s lived in his house on Downeast Circle for 25 years and could only recall one or two councilors, years ago, who visited his neighborhood and talked to him.
“Other than that, you hardly ever see anybody,” he said. “It’d be nice to have somebody to represent us.”
BDN reporters met Zack on a walk down his street in late February when he was shoveling snow outside his home, which is across the street from a park and splash pad the Bangor housing authority opened in 2019.
Kids and families were walking through the snow that afternoon in the streets of Capehart and Outer Ohio. The area has its own elementary school, Downeast, and two buses that connect Capehart to downtown and the airport.
Ramsay said he thinks there are certain issues, such as bus services, for which “the people in my district or precinct would have a totally different slant.” He believes councilors aren’t as concerned about cuts to bus service because fewer people take the bus in the neighborhoods where they live, for example.
Bangor has scaled back Capehart bus service twice since September, and the city hasn’t offered Saturday service on any of its bus routes since 2024. On the days it does run, bus service ends by 7 p.m.
Rj Nichols, the Capehart resident who’s advocated for speed safety measures in the neighborhood, said it would be helpful to have a councilor live nearby. To him, it doesn’t seem like the council wants low-income people to run.
Capehart and Outer Ohio have a median household income of about $46,000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey’s 5-year estimates for 2020-24 released earlier this year. The neighborhoods are included in the same block group, which is the smallest area for which the Census collects data.
That puts the area among the poorest in Bangor, which collectively has a median household income of about $60,000, the survey showed. The lowest-earning neighborhood is on the East side between State Street and the Penobscot River, with a median household income of about $17,000.
In contrast, Fairmount includes two blocks with median household incomes of about $76,000 and $109,000, according to the survey.
Leonard has suggested a ward-based voting system and raising pay to make it easier for low-income residents to serve.
“When someone is only paid $2,000 a year, it’s effectively a volunteer position,” he said.
Bangor City Manager Carollynn Lear said she doesn’t have strong feelings about proposals to implement a wards-based election system, and agreed that paying councilors more could bring in representatives from a wider array of demographic groups, which could include residents of underrepresented neighborhoods.
Being a good city councilor is time-consuming, Lear said. Councilors could spend 20 hours or more in a week on council obligations. That prevents some people who may otherwise be interested from running, she said.
If the city does choose to implement a new election system, there are many options for alternative structures, Leonard said. A change to the way councilors are elected would require the council to open a charter commission and get voter approval to change the city’s charter.
This process would take years, he said. It would require a referendum and working out how many wards there would be and where to draw neighborhood lines.
One option would be to elect most councilors through wards and have the whole city vote on a chair with more responsibility and pay, he said.
Tremble and Sarah Nichols, two of the former councilors, informally discussed adopting a voting wards system in the 2010s when they both served on the council, but the idea didn’t go anywhere, they said.
Nichols still thinks the City Council should work to change the charter to address the disparity in representation. She suggested implementing, at minimum, four council seats specific to wards that could correspond to the state’s legislative districts, while leaving the rest of the seats at-large because it can be hard to find people to run for council.
Ramsay, the Magnolia Hill resident, said he thinks splitting the city into voting districts would encourage more people from underrepresented neighborhoods to run because they’d feel like they had a shot.
“You’re not even going to attempt it” under the current system, he said.
Leonard said he believes a ward system could be in place by 2028 at the earliest and plans to bring it up to the council after this year’s budget season.
Until the charter is changed, some residents feel they’ve been left to fend for themselves.
“We need to care about a whole community, a whole city. And we don’t get that here in Bangor,” Rj Nichols said. “Bangor would start becoming a better place if they cared more about everybody in the city, instead of just select people.”
