City councilor running to become Portland’s next mayor

Andrew Zarro, 35, is the youngest of the four current and former Portland City Council members running for mayor.A former coffee shop owner who now works for a nonprofit, Zarro has served on the council for three years.“This is not a time for us to be comfortable with the status quo,” Zarro said in an interview. “I have solutions. I’m not talking about what’s wrong and ‘We shouldn’t do that.’ I’m walking people through how we’re going to fix it, from housing to homelessness to climate to affordability.”He ranks housing affordability as the city’s top issue.“We have really limited stock, so, the demand is really high, and that has inflated prices to a point where it’s unattainable. I couldn’t move here now. I think most of my friends couldn’t move here now,” Zarro said.He envisions streamlining Portland’s “extremely cumbersome” permitting process and accelerating the development of single-family homes and of apartments.“I’m advocating to build 10,000 units of housing in the next 10 years, and I want to do that by rezoning our city,” Zarro said.He’s eyeing industrial zones for residential use for owners and renters alike, such as in Bayside, near Kennedy Park.“We need a mayor who prioritizes innovation,” Zarro said, “Why can’t we have housing there in one of the most densely walkable neighborhoods with access to public transportation?”With more than 200 people living in tents around the city, Zarro advocates transitional housing — not more shelters — for homeless individuals and a regional approach to the problem.He voted against a 50-bed expansion of the city’s new 208-bed Homeless Services Center, a proposal the city council defeated 5-4 on Oct. 2.“We have to remember the city of Lewiston voted 5-2 not to build a homeless services shelter in their city with state funding. The town of Cape Elizabeth went out of their way to prevent affordable housing from being built in their town. The region is looking at Portland as the only one to solve this issue, but the reality is Portland won’t solve it on our own, and we can’t,” Zarro said.As chair of the City Council’s Sustainability & Transportation Committee, Zarro brokered the deal that sunk last year’s referendum to ban large cruise ships — with thousands of big-spending passengers — from docking in Portland. The sponsors, upset over ships idling for hours and running their fume-emitting engines, backed down when Zarro came up with a plan to electrify the waterfront.“There were a lot of unintended consequences that were going to happen. It was going to be very harmful to the unions on the waterfront. It was going to be harmful to the city’s revenue. It was going to be harmful to small businesses,” Zarro said.From shore power to solar power, Zarro wants Portland to do more to mitigate climate change, tapping into available federal funding.”If it’s a municipally owned building, there should be solar on top of it, green roofs when we can do them,” Zarro said. “For shore power to happen, we need to triple the size of our electrical grid. Our grid is archaic, and so, part of my platform is infrastructure. If we are able to increase our grid, it’s going to change the quality of life for all Portlanders.”Zarro supports reforming the referenda process in Portland, which has hamstrung the City Council’s ability to set policy on issues such as real estate development, rent, and wages.He would limit citizen initiatives to the November ballot, require 10% of voters who participated in the last gubernatorial election to sign the petition, up from the current 1,500 signatures, or 3%, and allow a supermajority of the council, seven of nine members, to amend a referendum after three years instead of the current five-year wait.“I think that’s fair, right? we are elected representatives,” Zarro said.