05/15/2023
Wanted to post that I was contacted by a tenant at 40 Harlow and the location of the beautiful Zillman Art Museum and they indicated that homeless have been spending time in the blocked off courtyard and there are used needles everywhere!! Which I had to leave what I was doing to clean up. We are tip-toeing around the homeless situation while the hard working tax payers of Bangor are dealing with a major safety issue. This is an opinion of mine, however; we are not helping anyone by allowing this behavior to continue. There are stolen shopping carts being pushed around every corner of our once beautiful city and we need to allow our Police Department to strongly enforce THEFT and TRESPASSING and here are some additional ideas that may help;
1) Implement a NO PAN Handling order inside city limits!!! There is someone on every street corner in addition to those standing in front of open businesses like Bagel Central. Do you think that revenue is DOWN because of this????? I would have to guess YES....perhaps some low hanging fruit?
2) NO Loitering!! Police need to be given the freedom to move people along! We have services in Bangor to assist with these challenges so these are the places they are moving to and from, but to allow people to park and stay in public areas is also hurting businesses and again is not assisting or helping these individuals.
3) The city of Bangor needs to have resources in place for the taxpayers and business owners that call Bangor home to clean up used needles and f***s that we as the taxpayers are left to clean up??? Resources for the homeless that do not contribute to the tax base, but no resources for those who are contributing to the tax pool? doesn't seem right??
Bangor is a HUB for a large region in Maine and local employers are having a difficult time recruiting talent as-is, now try recruiting a family to Bangor after taking them downtown for dinner to show them around?? One quick tour of the city the way it stands will significantly reduce the chance of obtaining talent and recruiting talented people to this city is how we grow and thrive as the incredible city that Bangor can and should be!!!!
So many hard working individuals have spent enormous amounts of capital and the foundation for growth has been laid... Waterfront Concerts....Hospital Expansion....Cross Insurance Center....NEW YMCA (to be built) let's not throw it away. End of my post....