I’d never heard of this loser until today. His name is Misah Pride (sounds made up to me). He is the mayor of South Portland. It’s across the Fore River from North Portland. It is safer than the way Joyce Craig left Manchester, NH (most cities are), is mostly white, picked Biden over Trump in 2020 (52.5-to 43.6), and their property taxes suck.
People on fixed incomes are in a tough spot. For a few decades, they paid taxes to the city and the schools, only to see the cost of that declining value rise. You could sell, but you’d have to leave your house, life, and maybe kids and grandkids, and what can you afford to move into?
Or you could get a reverse mortgage to pay those taxes.
Sorry about all that equity you’ve accumulated. We’ve got a bottomless pit to fill, so pay up.
“This is very much a perfect storm,” Mayor Pride said. “We live in a coastal community, it’s very attractive to live here. And unfortunately, that means lots of people are buying lots of residential properties.”
“It’s not that commercial is necessarily doing poorly, it’s that there isn’t enough buying and selling of commercial properties to warrant reviewing and raising those percentages…so it’s a really difficult position to be in,” he continued.
How about cutting costs, finding efficiency, reducing departments, or outsourcing some services to more capable and responsive third parties who might compete for the opportunity and lower costs? No. More government, more taxes, screw you.
Maybe that could be the slogan for tax-abused South Portlanders as they rally to replace the current mayor and city government in the next election. A perfect storm, perhaps?
