Seeking a seat on Gorham’s town council, Harold E. Freeman Jr., 44, is making his first bid for public office.
Freeman, an Army staff sergeant, served with Company B of Maine’s 133rd Engineer Battalion in the Iraq war. Now, he’s asking that townspeople give him a chance to also serve them on the home front as a councilor, but admitted he would have to learn about a lot of issues facing the town. “There will be a learning curve,” he said.
He sees traffic as one of the town’s top issues and said he’s worried about the bypass even though Congress earmarked money for it. “Let’s get that going,” he said. “Traffic is atrocious.”
An advocate of getting the southerly phase of the bypass completed first, he would then pursue phase two, which is the northern path. “One step at a time,” he said.
If elected, Freeman would be visible in the community, give out his phone number and keep lines of communication open. “I’ve never met any of them, and they’re making the rules for us,” he said of the people now on the council.
He also wants to improve communication between parents and teachers. Freeman and his wife, Ora, live on Garden Avenue and have two children. One daughter, Ashley, 19, is a college student and another, Ora Marie, 16, is a junior at Gorham High School.
As a parent, he’s a proponent of more activities for children and would like the town to build a skateboard park. “We need things for the kids to do,” Freeman said.
He agreed that it’s a good idea to have the municipal and school offices share the same building but questioned whether a renovated Shaw School would handle future growth. “Is it big enough?” he asked.
It’s a good concept, he said of the Shaw project, but opposed borrowing money for it. “I can’t see a project out there where we need to borrow money,” he said.
He wants to keep a close tab on the town’s finances. Freeman advocates an audit to find just where the town’s money is being spent. “Accountability,” he said. “Let’s see where our money is going. Then make decisions.”
Freeman agreed with the council consolidating dispatching. “They made a good decision to go with the county,” he said.
He said it was a good deal, saving money for the town, which didn’t lose services, and for dispatchers, who all accepted county jobs except for one. “I didn’t understand what the problem was,” he said, citing pay increases and better jobs for the personnel involved.
The town needs more small businesses, said Freeman, a carpenter by profession. And he would work to create incentives to attract small businesses to Gorham, which would help reduce the tax burden for homeowners.
“It’s got to start somewhere,” he said. “We pay a lot of tax money.”
Additionally, he would like to reduce red tape for townspeople applying for permits and is worried about increased use of eminent domain following recent Supreme Court action.
Freeman, who was hospitalized last year after a blast in Mosul, Iraq, belongs to several veterans groups. He has lived in Gorham since 1992.
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