Four citizen initiatives designed to make Maine’s largest city more liveable by tackling the high cost of housing, increasing workers’ wages and fighting climate change will be on Portland’s November ballot, the group spearheading the campaign announced Tuesday.
The initiatives are part of the “Campaign for a Liveable Portland,” led by Maine Democratic Socialists of America. The measures will appear on Portland’s ballot in November along with a competing measure that would make small changes to regulating short-term rentals, which Maine DSA is trying to limit, and recommendations put forward by a commission to reform the city’s governance.
The ballot measures come after Maine DSA flexed its political power in 2020 through the People First Portland campaign, which succeeded in passing initiatives to raise the city’s minimum wage, create rent control regulations, ban facial surveillance technology, and enact green building standards.
Still, despite those successes, organizers of the current campaign say more must be done.
“Our communities are being threatened by landlords making record profits off of an affordable housing crisis, wages being outpaced by inflation, and climate change and congestion pulverizing our waterfront. Portland is on a track to become unlivable, but we’re organizing to correct that course,” Maine DSA campaign chair Wes Pelletier said of the need for the Campaign for a Liveable Portland initiatives.
Sarah Louden, vice chair of the campaign, added that...
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