Mayoral poll: In what areas can Portland be strengthened to benefit businesses?

We asked Portland's mayoral candidates:

In what areas can Portland be strengthened to benefit businesses?

The responses we received by our deadline follow. They have been edited for length.

Michael Brennan: Maine is a small business state, and Portland is a small business community. It will be a priority of mine to visit every significant business in Portland, with the intent of determining how the city can best help them create new jobs, be it one, two or 10 jobs. Businesses' needs may range from venture capital to streamlining regulatory decisions and ensuring quality workers. I would benchmark the number of jobs that could be created over the next two years, and work through the Greater Portland Economic Development Corp. to create a "research triangle" in Portland. ... The purpose of the partnership would be to identify research and development needs for existing businesses and identify areas for future job growth. The partnership would also play a lead role in work force development efforts in order to align job growth with worker skills. Work force development should also include attracting new skilled residents and providing an opportunity for them to be innovative and entrepreneurial as part of a creative economy. Ultimately, we should never have a business in Portland with a job opening that cannot be filled by someone living in this region.

Peter Bryant: Promote this program: Use all local businesses. A) Narrow Gauge Rail; B) Sailing ships; C) Casco Bay Lines; D) Charter boats, etc.

Ralph Carmona: The review process needs to have a city hall culture that is consistent for those who want to do business in Portland. Anecdotes abound about the excessive use of flexibility in interpreting reviews of projects and permits. For many, city hall staff exercise too much discretion because of a fragmented governing structure that causes unwarranted delays.

Greater clarity will only come with a more singular political focus of oversight with a mayor working to further the process. Depending on the size of the project, the mayor will weigh in with key constituents, councilors and the city manager to establish consensus on what is in the public interest.

For example, in the Thompson's Point project, the important moments for city involvement will come in the actual process of development. The city has an opportunity to suggest locations of buildings, selections of hotels, potential for a living/working art space. The devil is in the details. The passage of an ordinance is only the first. What has happened since? How do we move the process forward so that it eventually leads to a more developed waterfront and a centerpiece for Portland's culture and growth? A mayor who listens to business and neighborhood interests can find common ground and win-win solutions.

Jill Duson: A priority of my administration will be to improve service at city hall by holding myself, city employees and elected officials accountable to meet the needs of the citizens and residents of Portland. My focus will be to work with the manager and city department heads to address areas of concern regarding constituent interactions with city services. My intent is to do an accelerated department by department overview of regulations to streamline requirements and make it possible to access simplified, transparent processes for key transactions.

Over the past several months of discussions and visits, I have heard troublesome reports from individual and business constituents about problems with our licensing and inspection services. Given, this experience, I will likely begin this program review with the licensing and inspections function.

As mayor, I will work with the city manager and staff to introduce a world-class service model for responding to constituent concerns. Using simple business process improvement tools (e.g. value stream mapping, project manager planning tools, etc., and creating a uniform standard for handling constituent complaint/concerns), I will work with the city manager to have him implement a standard response process and to track and analyze service requests.

John Eder: We need to build more housing for the work force. To do this, we need to incentivize it like we do with other, often more doubtful, economic development opportunities. I want to give a TIF [tax break] to spur the development of mixed-use affordable housing on the Portland peninsula -- especially on underutilized lots in Bayside. ... I have a commitment to get a thousand units of affordable housing under way in my first term, which will stimulate a building boom in Portland and create jobs.

I want to require the tax-break recipients and their contractors to hire Portland residents first and pay predetermined livable wages. Having thousands of new residents living in the downtown will have a great multiplier effect on the Portland economy as those residents spend their money into the local downtown economy. ...

Another thing I would do as mayor to attract business and economic development to Portland is to have my office be a clearinghouse to get health care for all Portland residents. I would do this by organizing small businesses in Portland into affordable health care co-ops so we can take advantage of the benefits coming online from the federal Affordable Healthcare Act exchange [program] in 2014.

Hamza Haadoow: We are luckily located on the coast and we have a harbor, which can work for us. From the tourist to imports and exports, we can diversify our economy and promote our businesses to the rest of the world. If I get elected I will be a true partner with Portland businesses and Portland people.

Jodie Lapchick: Strengthening our brand and increasing Portland's awareness globally as a top-10 place to live, work and visit will help attract businesses and residents who will help all of our existing businesses thrive; so, again, the key to economic development is in marketing and communications. This should include, as a priority, creating easy-to-understand how-to guides to doing business with Portland.

In addition, we need to continue streamlining the process of doing business with city hall. To that end, I will work collaboratively to lead the charge of making things make sense. With strong and focused leadership, we can get this done. To that end, I plan to embark on a personal audit where I will study reports and gather input on what could be improved and what is still not working and WHY. In my experience, there are often obstacles that intersect with other obstacles that need to be teased apart and examined to identify simple solutions for improvement. To gain a full and complete understanding of those issues, I plan to spend a good deal of time in the trenches, observing the various departments to identify the issues and begin to introduce potential solutions that will work for everyone.

David Marshall: Portland can be strengthened to benefit business through changes in city hall to ensure timely and effective service. By focusing on customer service and creating a user-friendly public face, city hall can help businesses achieve goals through the following actions:
1. Create a centralized 511 phone system to allow the public to contact city hall by calling a single phone number;
2. Upgrade portlandmaine.gov website to make it searchable, include a section on the home page to place work orders, and post videos of all public meetings;
3. Restructure the Planning and Urban Development Department;
4. Ensure adequate staffing levels to process permits and conduct inspections;
5. Provide customer service training to all staff members who interact with the public;
6. Hire an independent auditor to ensure excellent customer service;
7. Make the city codes easy to read and understand;
8. Institute a Technical Advisory Committee to provide guidance to developers and entrepreneurs during the concept development stage;
9. Track all applications by creating a professional management and performance system;
10. Develop an Executive Management Team to analyze stats and performance through weekly meetings with department heads and the city manager.

Nick Mavadones: We have to make it easier to create jobs. To do that, we should make all permits and applications available online, make certain projects subject to same-day approval and make customer service our highest priority. These reforms will get more projects from the planning stage to the paycheck stage and make it easier for small businesses to create jobs.

Portland must maintain its rigorous safety and environmental standards; however, that does not mean that their implementation needs to be cumbersome to business owners and city staff alike. I would work to develop a model that gives businesses an opportunity to correct minor deficiencies that do not pose a risk to the public or employees rather than delay a project or prevent a business from opening.

Portland has an active and engaged business community. With a mayor who can bring people together, we can remove barriers that sometimes prevent development from happening at the pace we would all like.

Markos Miller: Portland is a great city to live in. We must also be a great city to work and do business in. Portland's new economic plan offers a guide on how to do this. As mayor I will establish collaborative relationships with the business, educational and creative communities and neighborhoods to identify our strategic assets, articulate a clear vision of the forms of economic development we seek, and create the context in which the community can realize this vision. As mayor I will work in and outside of Portland to advance this vision.

I have two specific proposals: To improve our economy we must maintain and enhance our local, indigenous strengths, such as our local creative economy and neighborhood business districts while also pursuing regional and national opportunities. I envision a city hall that engages local communities to identify gaps in goods and services and to develop appropriate neighborhood-based economic development opportunities.

I will jumpstart the redevelopment of Bayside, spurring investment, creating blue-collar jobs and widening our tax base. I will push for investments in roads, parks and pedestrian ways, leverage city-owned property and local bonding abilities, and fight to remove bureaucratic barriers to development. Bayside can be the model 21st century sustainable neighborhood that Portland will need to attract the creative work force needed to compete in tomorrow's economy.

Jed Rathband: Without a question, the posture at city hall needs to change from its current "Sorry, we can't do that" attitude to a proactive one of "Let's find a way to make this happen." Currently, city hall strikes an adversarial pose with business and would-be business owners that plagues our ability to attract economic drivers. We simply cannot afford to operate like this any longer. Even in a down economy, Maine cities like Belfast are seeing an economic expansion solely because they possess the right posture of putting service first.

Over the last decade, silos have begun to rise up between the different city hall departments like tartar on a tooth. This stems from a lack of communication that has been fostered by ineffective leadership. With the new manager and a popularly-elected mayor, we have the opportunity to turn Portland around and get it moving in the right direction. If we ever hope to address the budget shortfalls and subsequent stopgap tax hikes, we must be ready and willing to change the way we conduct business.

Ethan Strimling: The biggest roadblock to business development in Portland is the culture of city hall. From the missed opportunity of the Maine State Pier redevelopment, to the hoops that ultimately killed Roxanne Quimby's vision for artist residences downtown, to the endless site improvements (beyond the scope of the project) that city hall mandates on developers -- businesses have lost complete faith in Portland and are becoming reluctant to invest in us under these conditions. The most recent example is when Carbonite took its 200 jobs to Lewiston because the city of Portland couldn't help them solve their parking problems. This just isn't acceptable.

While these challenges are certainly about our process being too cumbersome, they fundamentally show a lack of strong and unified leadership. As mayor, I will do a comprehensive audit of our procedures to determine which are ludicrous and which are necessary. I will look at surrounding communities and see what they do well, so that we can follow suit. However, most importantly, I will create clear expectations of our staff and I will intervene when the process appears to be killing invaluable economic growth.

..Portland can and must be THE city where investors come to start and grow their businesses.

Chris Vail: I think I touched upon it a bit with my previous answer, but the simple idea of growing will attract economical and responsible strength to benefit business. The economic development plan is not a plan to throw a new building up everywhere we have room or to sell ourselves out to business and run over our residents. The economic development needs to establish quality sustainable jobs and create a better livability for the city of Portland people, and beyond. We need to attract developers and businesses that are sold on our resources of waterfront, tides, winds, sun and even rain. The industry of power and utilizing energy from our resources is an untapped market here in Portland.

I also think we can continue to promote from within our great marketing companies that have flourished in Portland over the years, our breweries, and restaurants and continue to aggressively market the Portland experience as a good fit for potential business and development. I think once we show the prototype to how business succeeds in Portland we can begin to grow strong relationship with new business and development.

Read responses to Question 1: What is Portland's greatest economic asset and what do you intend to do with it?

Read responses to Question 3: What will you do to attract new companies here?