LEWISTON – Stavros Mendros thinks he’ll have better odds clearing up government waste as one of seven Lewiston city councilors than he did as one of 151 state representatives.

“I want that opportunity to really analyze spending,” Mendros said. “I figure I can come up with a few ways to save some money in each department.”

Mendros is one of two candidates seeking to succeed Ward 1 Councilor Roger Philippon on the Lewiston City Council. The former state representative said he will bring his experience and contacts from Augusta to help the city.

His top priority will be keeping taxes down, he said.

“I won’t vote to raise taxes,” Mendros said. “I think we need to take a look at the city services with a fresh set of eyes. I think we can find some places to trim.”

Lewiston schools are safe from his budget ax, however. The conservative former legislator said he’s always been a liberal in that respect.

“You need to spend money on education,” he said. “Educated children don’t need money for welfare or for rehab or all of the other services people need if they get into trouble.”

Other cuts are possible, because the city cannot afford higher property taxes. Citizens – especially the elderly – can’t afford higher property taxes, he said.

Neither can city businesses. Mendros said tax incentives, like tax increment financing deals, only help in small ways.

“The best way to attract business is to hold the line on property tax,” Mendros said. “In this day and age, you need TIFs, but those really only help the very big businesses. To attract business overall, you need to keep taxes down. A small business with five or six employees wouldn’t get much of a TIF, but lower property taxes overall might bring them in. And those are businesses we rely on downtown.”

Mendros said the reaction to Mayor Larry Raymond’s letter to Somalis last year was overblown by the media and special interest groups.

“There were people on both sides from outside of Lewiston that tried profiting from all that,” Mendros said. “Both the ‘teach tolerance’ crowd and the white supremacists used that letter to exploit the people of Lewiston and get media coverage. They just wanted to push their agendas. It really had nothing to do with Lewiston.”

Mendros sympathized with Raymond’s message in the letter, but not with the letter itself.

“I think it could have been written differently, or he could have met with the Somalis instead,” he said. “But I don’t blame him for being out of town during the rally, either. The two groups involved acted like petulant children, and I think they deserved as little attention as possible.”

Mendros applauded councilors for not getting involved in the political debate immediately afterwards.

“I certainly think they could have made the situation worse, if they had jumped on the bandwagon one way or another,” Mendros said. “They could have been out in front of one of those rallies instead of working behind the scenes, and that would have been a mistake.”

– Scott Taylor

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