Meet the candidates for City Council
Among four Presque Islers looking to represent their fellow citizens in local government, there is a shared concern for the struggle to bring the city to its full potential.
The group of candidates are competing for two open seats, and present voters with an array of ideas, approaches and backgrounds — a current councilor making the most of life despite a physical handicap, a former councilor and retired baby boomer, a young native daughter recently returned from Florida, and an entrepreneur and military veteran.
Michael Chasse, Donald Gardner, Natilee Graves and Dwayne Singletary have all been inspired to run for local government, with the hope of bringing a voice and a vote to city council to try to make life better in Aroostook County’s commercial hub.
One of the city council seats is being vacated by Peter Hallowell, who is declining to pursue another term. The other seat is currently held by Chasse, a 33-year-old quadriplegic engineer who moved back to Presque Isle after a skiing accident in 2007 and ran successfully for city council in 2013. He thinks the seven members of the city council have done well amid challenging transitions, declining state funding, and the bid for a modern community recreation center.
“People don’t always appreciate the hard work, but I feel like we’ve done a lot of great things,” Chasse said, referring to the many hours the council and various boards have spent in discussion and fact-finding before making decisions.
“The shortfalls from the state revenue have been significant. We lost $1.4 million in revenue sharing from the state, and we’ve minimized the impact,” Chasse said. “We’ve carefully cut back things so that as a resident you wouldn’t see it, and maintained taxes to within a quarter, and raised $3.8 million for the community center.” Going forward, he added, Presque Isle and other neighboring local governments need to collaborate more. “Regionally, we need to figure out ways, as a small cities and communities, to work together to do more with less.”
Retired life-long Presque Isle resident Gardner is running for a seat on the council with the goal of making the council more attuned to residents’ concerns broadly, the way he remembers it during his 12 years on the city council in the 1990s and 2000s. “The councilors should be available to hear what the people say,” said Gardner. “I don’t see that as much as I have in the past. We were out and about all the time.”
Gardner, age 66, recently retired after a career spanning a Vietnam-era Navy stint, restaurant, retail and the Defense Finance and Accounting Services. Gardner thinks now is a good time for his perspective, after the coming and going of the at-times controversial city manager Jim Bennett. In particular, Gardner is concerned about the pay-as-you-throw trash system — which may or may not end up being cost-effective for the city — and the closure of the city’s swimming pools.
“Change is not bad, but change for the sake of change is not a good thing,” Gardner said. “Let’s start paying attention to the common people.”
Another bid for the city council comes from Singletary, a 51-year-old restaurant manager, entrepreneur and Army veteran whose priorities are the interconnected goals of helping new businesses and attracting young families and college students to the centers of Presque Isle on and around Main Street.
“We’re dropping the ball on our young people and our businesses. We hear all these promises about helping small businesses, but we don’t see the fruit of those promises,” Singletary said.
Originally from New York City, Singletary served in the Army during the 1980s and ‘90s, taught Christian theology and came to Maine as a manager for Ruby Tuesday in the Brunswick-Topsham area and eventually came to manage the Presque Isle location.
Singletary also ran Star-City Coffee and Bella Salon on Main Street, which have been closed since January after the building’s owner went into foreclosure. He said he’s in the process of working with a bank on a resolution to reopen the shops.
It’s those kinds of downtown businesses that Singletary believes the city council should encourage as part of downtown revitalization efforts that would make small investments in public amenities. “Revitalizing might be adding a few more more benches, since we have the walking path and bike path nearby. That can invite people just to spend time downtown.”
Singletary, who has worked on the downtown revitalization committee and run for council before, also thinks the city should work with the University of Maine Presque Isle and Northern Maine Community College to encourage them to set up space in underused areas downtown. The old Keybank building, he suggests, could be turned into student housing on the upper floors with a small retail or common space on the first floor. “Presque Isle is beautiful and has a lot of potential. Downtown should be bustling.”
The other candidate for city council, Graves, would bring the perspective of local a college student and someone who has lived and worked outside of Maine. Graves, age 33, is making her first run for council at the urging of friends, after working as a chef in Florida, where her father had moved in retirement, and recently coming back to enroll in UMPI’s physical therapy assistance program while working as a chef at McCain Foods.
“I hope to bring a different point of view,” Graves said, adding that she wants to explore a range of approaches to issues the region is grappling with.
“Bringing younger people here and keeping them here is important. The area is a little underdeveloped, but I think the foundation of Presque Isle is amazing.”
