Wes Pelletier: It’s important to have a council that can take action
Every month Liz Trice interviews a community member for The West End News. This month Liz caught up with Wes Pelletier. He’s the new District 2 city councilor for Portland’s West End, Parkside, St. John -Valley Streets, and Oakdale/USM neighborhoods.
Tell me a little about yourself.
I grew up in Richmond and Topsham, studied English at UMaine Orono, then moved to Portland about ten years ago. I’ve been involved in politics since middle school, when I canvassed for Howard Dean. In 2017, I joined DSA, where I got into leadership and learned how to be an organizer, run meetings, and deal with all sorts of administrative overhead. In my day job, I’m a software engineer with a company based out of Scarborough.
What made you decide to run for office?
I’ve been frustrated with City Hall over the past decade, and, having talked to a lot of folks at the doors over the past year, I don’t think that sentiment is uncommon. A lot of critical issues have been left unaddressed, leading to the crises we now find ourselves in, in which rising housing costs are forcing out the working class that make Portland function. I decided to run for office after Tori Pelletier (no relation) who is a strong advocate for the working class, decided not to run. I wanted to ensure that City Council would continue to have a strong voice for the needs of tenants and the working class. I’m looking forward to figuring out where the barriers to meaningful policy change are and how we can overcome them.
What do you think the council can do to address the housing crisis?
We’re seeing a drain on our workforce as people are getting priced out of Portland and even southern Maine altogether. In the past year, Portland’s made good progress in getting our zoning policy up to date in the implementation of LD2003 and ReCode. And groups like the Urbanist Coalition of Portland have helped create a better process with community buy-in. I think we can use the same approach to examine our permitting and licensing process. Which is by all accounts Kafkaesque and often results in projects losing a great deal of money as they sit in bureaucratic limbo.
So we need to be looking at that end, which is the nuts and bolts. But we also need to be looking at the bigger picture. How we can get to a place where affordable and workforce units are as or more feasible than luxury units. Some solutions could include city bonding to loan money to projects that include workforce housing – a process called social housing – to explore the idea of having a public developer without the higher profit motive that for-profit developers have. I would like to see public money that goes into housing be more efficiently recycled. So that we can build more housing without costing taxpayers as much money.
Any other issues you’re prioritizing?
I really think one of the most unifying issues for Portland is increasing its walkability. Everyone wants to feel safer on the streets. And we all recognize the potential that a city as small as Portland has in being easily traversable. I want to look at a lot of the temporary projects the city’s put on over the last few years, such as traffic calming and painted pedestrian walkways, and find out how we can build on them and make them permanent. I’m also excited about the direction Greater Portland Metro is headed and want to empower them where possible.
What’s your process over the next few months? Who will you be talking to?
I would love to hear from anyone with ideas to address the core issues facing Portland: increasing workforce and affordable housing. I will be building relationships with other city councilors and city staff. Also, I would love to hear from every business owner in District 2, renters, housing developers. Anyone who is trying to solve the housing crisis.
I plan on holding town halls, and office hours, reaching out to renters, business owners in District 2. It’s important for people to reach out to me and let me know what they think could be better. We can build a coalition that can make real change in Portland.
You can contact Wes at: wpelletier@portlandmaine.gov.
This interview was edited for brevity and clarity.