There must be a way to get businesses to invest in Lewiston without giving out tax breaks, and candidate Larry Poulin said he wants to help find it.

“We need the investment, but we can’t price out our own people,” Poulin said. “That’s what we’re doing.”

Poulin is seeking the City Council Ward 5 seat, hoping to replace outgoing Councilor Robert Connors.

The city is on a crisis path, Poulin said. He sees high property taxes, caused by city enticements to bring in new business, pricing residents out.

“And the economy is not helping anybody,” he said. “They have high gas and insurance prices to contend with, too.”

Higher prices force people out to find less expensive living conditions. That threatens Lewiston’s economic recovery.

“The businesses we want to lead our economy need those people, and we’re driving them away,” he said. “It’s not my goal to stop growth in property values. But I think right now those costs are going up faster than wages. We need to reverse that.”

Poulin said he wants to work within the city to find ways to help bring businesses to town without passing the costs along to taxpayers. An example is the Colisee redevelopment. It’s an asset to the community, but not one deserving of public money.

“Businesses and private developers are the ones that need to take that risk,” he said. “It’s the government role to help them by making things easier, not paying the way.”

He admits private developers failed at first, but he wanted the city to offer some other kind of help.

“If the developer is failing, don’t step in,” he said. “You help them find other resources, you find someone else to take his place. But I don’t think it’s the job of the city to take over.”

In fact, Poulin said there’s not much left for the city to do except let developers know what’s happening here.

“We’ve done the public work and now we need to start attracting the businesses,” he said. “We need to make industry and manufacturing aware of us. That’s the mainstay. Bring in those companies, they bring the jobs and everything else follows.”

Poulin said he doesn’t see places in the city budget that can be cut.

“But I would push for more contracting,” he said. “Things like snow removal or construction. I think the private sector can probably be more cost-effective. I say we let them.”