Saco Mayor Jodi MacPhail. Courtesy photo/City of Saco
SACO — Making good on her campaign promise to maintain open lines of communication between her office and the public, Saco Mayor Jodi MacPhail will host office hours between 4:30 and 7 p.m. every Tuesday at her Saco City Hall office starting in the new year.
For MacPhail, who ran unopposed and is the municipality’s first female mayor, listening to constituents, no matter what they’re concerns are, has been foundational to her approach to public office.
“It didn’t matter who called me, even if they lived in another community (but had some connection to Saco) … I would listen to them,” she said in a recent interview.
MacPhail came to politics through volunteering. Once her daughter — now 31 — was grown and out of the house, MacPhail began ramping up her volunteer work, including with Saco Main Street, a nonprofit that works on economic development and community revitalization. Even though she describes herself as “not a political person,” that civic involvement morphed into a bid for City Council in 2019.
Since then she’s represented voters in Ward 6 and served as deputy mayor since 2020. She was officially sworn in to her new position as mayor on Dec. 4.
When it comes to her ability to liaise between voters and the city, she recountedan example of communicating with an unhappy resident after Saco enacted a policy regulating where food trucks can operate. The decision engendered some community discontent because the city had allowed food trucks to park in the lot at Camp Ellis, and blocked off two “prime” parking spaces in the process, according to MacPhail.
MacPhail recalled she was able to smooth things over by reaching out to a resident in her ward who had been discussing the issue publicly. The woman told MacPhail she had been nervous to reach out to her city councilor directly, but “through a series of conversations I earned her trust and proved the importance of all elected officials having respect for our residents,” according to the mayor.
It’s little surprise that demystifying government is a focus for MacPhail given that she’s open about the learning curve she experienced when she was first elected.
Working in city government “doesn’t come with a rule book and it doesn’t come with definitions,” she said, remembering the studying up she had to do in order to be on top of City Council meetings. When staff would throw out confusing terms she didn’t understand, she remembered jotting them down to look them up later.
Her scheduled office hours will be an opportunity to translate some of those technocratic details into regular language for her constituents, but it’s also a chance for resident’s to get to know MacPhail as a person.
As a lifelong resident of Saco — she graduated in Thornton Academy’s class of 1989 — MacPhail has a lot of love for her community. She describes the city as a “small community with a big heart.”
“I can go anywhere and run into somebody I know,” she said, evoking the joy she gets from reconnecting with people she knows from different parts of her life on a random day of the week. That sort of easy connection is what she’s hoping to bring to the table as mayor.
MacPhail is hoping for more than just warm conversations now that she helms the city. Mayors preside over City Council sessions and cast votes in the instance of a tie, and she will also facilitate school board meetings. On the whole though, her role in shaping city policy is now less direct than when she sat on City Council — she’ll function more as an “advocate” these days, she said.
In particular, she wants to use her influence to push forward development of the Portland Road/Route 1 corridor.
Successive Saco Comprehensive Plans have identified the Route 1 corridor as an area for growth. “This area is a prime location for additional commercial and/or industrial development as well as mixed-use, village-type developments,” according to the 2022-2023 draft plan.
The corridor currently has a number of car dealerships, a movie theater, and a few restaurants. MacPhail envisions it as a place for both commercial and residential development, but said that the city still needs to get clear on what they want to construct there, which will entail taking a look at what’s allowed under current zoning ordinances.
“The first thing that needs to be done is to create a plan or vision,” she said. “Until that vision is in place we will not be able to move forward.”
Another priority for MacPhail is traffic safety, especially in light of the fatalities that have rocked the city this year.
According to vehicle crash data from the Maine Department of Transportation, Saco has had seven pedestrian involved car crashes in 2023, up from two pedestrian involved crashes in 2022. Two of them have been fatal. In November, a woman crossing Bradley Street was hit and killed by a car, and in August, a dump truck struck and killed a woman on Water Street.
In November, MacPhail joined members of the bicycle advocacy group, Bike BS, local pedestrian safety advocate Chelsea Hill, and others for World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims for an action on Nov. 19 to honor those killed and injured in Saco — including Li Zhen Wu, the woman killed on Bradley Street, and Kimberley Lavin, the woman killed on Water Street.
Patrick Conlon of Bike BS thanked McPhail for her participation in the action the following day via email. He also encouraged Biddeford Mayor Marty Grohman and MacPhail to work together to make physical changes to the cities’ roads to make them safer.
MacPhail said she’s fully on board with finding a solution, but didn’t offer any specifics, saying that the first step is getting stakeholders to talk to one another.
“We need to work with residents and our staff as well as police to try to come up with something we can do. I don’t know what it is. But it’s going to be a primary focus (for me) to get those groups together.”
Want to talk traffic safety with Mayor MacPhail?
Members of the community can either drop by during her office hour time slots or make an appointment by calling Michelle Beasley in the City Administrator’s Office at 207-282-4191; or email Mayor MacPhail directly at jmacphail@sacomaine.org to set up an appointment.
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