Where I Stand
Portland Regional Chamber of Commerce Candidate Questionnaire
The Portland Regional Chamber of Commerce sent every council candidate the same five questions. Here are my answers, exactly as submitted, and how they connect to the platform I've already published, with the research behind it.
My platform, at a glance
Swipe or scroll across. Each priority links to the answers where it shows up.
Public Safety & Substance Use
"Care for the person who's using. Consequences for the person who's selling."
Transportation & Safe Streets
"Streets that are safe by design."
Jump to a question
Question 1
What policies, if any, would you pursue to support a competitive and predictable environment for businesses to start, operate, and grow in Portland?
Small businesses are the soul of Portland, and too many tell me the city is hard to say yes to. I'll push for a predictable permitting process with clear timelines, so an owner knows what to expect before they sign a lease. I'll protect our working waterfront and our makers. And I'll make sure the cost of doing business here, from fees to taxes, keeps Portland competitive with our peer cities. A city that works for its entrepreneurs is a city that keeps its character and its jobs.
Building Our City makes this exact case for Woodfords Corner, Munjoy Hill, and Congress Street: a shop owner should hear about the development next door from a city notice inviting her to the table, months before ground breaks, not from a dumpster showing up on a Tuesday morning. A business-district protection ordinance and enforceable community-benefit terms on large development are how "predictable" becomes more than a word businesses are told.
Read the full Building Our City brief →Question 2
What would you do to increase housing production and affordability in Portland, and what changes, if any, would you make to Inclusionary Zoning?
We don't have a housing crisis by accident. We permitted 548 homes in 2025 when the region needs closer to 700 a year. I'll push to build more, speeding approvals and freeing up city-owned and vacant properties. On Inclusionary Zoning, I'd explore a variable approach: let developers choose fewer units with deeper affordability or more units at a lower rate. I'd also consider targeted IZ-free zones where we simply let housing get built, because more supply everywhere eases pressure for everyone. Don't just house people. Home them.
This is the recalibrated IZ position built out in full in Housing That Works: let a developer choose more units at a higher AMI or fewer units at a deeper, lower AMI, locked into whichever path they pick, plus a bounded IZ-free pilot zone to test what market forces alone can deliver at crisis speed. Under the current one-size rule, zero projects have paid into the Housing Trust Fund in five years.
Read the full Housing brief →Question 3
What changes, if any, would you make to Portland's approaches to public safety, shelter and services for people experiencing homelessness, and substance use, including the city's needle exchange program?
Public safety means meeting each problem with the right tool. On substance use, I separate two groups: the person who is sick gets treatment, and I'd protect proven public health tools like the needle exchange that keep people alive long enough to recover. The person who profits by dealing gets every consequence the law allows, through a dedicated unit working with the DA and state partners. On homelessness, shelter is a start, not a finish. We need services, housing, and a path to stability. People who love Portland are afraid of what it's becoming. I'll answer that fear with action.
The shelter-to-stability piece draws on One Door, Housing That Works' plank for treating housing and homelessness as one problem split across six separate front doors instead of one system: CHOM's FUSE Greater Portland model has already cut hospitalizations 68% and ER visits 62% statewide for the people who cycle hardest through crisis systems.
The substance-use piece is the same care-and-consequences split Keeping Us Safe builds out: treatment for the person who's sick, enforcement for the person who's dealing, and the needle exchange protected as a proven public health tool. It runs through the city's Behavioral Health Unit and a dedicated enforcement track aimed at dealing, not using.
Read the full Safety brief → Read the full Housing brief →Question 4
What approach should Portland take to maintaining an effective transportation system that meets the needs of residents, workers, and businesses, while ensuring pedestrian and traffic safety?
Our streets have to work for everyone: drivers, bus riders, cyclists, and the person crossing on foot. I'll invest in streets that are safe by design, with real pedestrian infrastructure where people have been hurt. I also see transit as an economic engine. I'd explore a regional circulator, modeled on Emeryville's free Emery Go Round, connecting business districts across Greater Portland so our regional chambers can partner to move customers to their doors. When people can easily get to a shop or a shift without a car, our whole region grows.
Question 5
How would you balance the need to fund essential city services with the importance of keeping property taxes affordable for residents and maintaining a competitive environment for businesses? What specific steps, if any, would you take to manage municipal spending?
Portland has two tax levers, commercial and residential, and too much weight falls on homeowners and renters because our business base isn't growing. I'll work to widen it: audit programs to fund what's proven, and pursue new outside grants aggressively, with a dedicated grant-writing effort, so local taxpayers aren't the only source. I'd also use community development funds to help finance the impact fees that make opening a business costly, lowering the barrier to entry. A stronger commercial base shares the load. Fiscal responsibility and compassion aren't opposites. Done right, they're the same work.
Widening the commercial tax base so homeowners and renters aren't carrying it alone is the same case Building Our City makes about development generally: tax revenue shouldn't come at the cost of the community that generates it, whether that's a TIF district's community-benefit terms or a grant-writing effort aimed at outside dollars instead of local ones.
Read the full Building Our City brief →The Through-Line
Three of these five answers trace straight back to the platform: the IZ position in Housing That Works, the predictability and tax-base case in Building Our City, the One Door coordination behind the homelessness answer. Two break new ground. The regional transit circulator and the specific tax-and-grant mechanics aren't in a published brief yet, because the Chamber asked questions my platform hadn't addressed head-on before. I'd rather tell you that plainly than pretend every answer traces back to something already written. I've told you what I'd ask of developers, of City Hall, of the region. Now I'm asking you: what will you do for the city you want Portland to be?
Tell me your 2 & 1: 2 things you love about Portland, 1 thing you'd change →
Atiim Boykin · Portland City Council, At-Large 2026 · Read the full platform
Questions written by the Portland Regional Chamber of Commerce. Answers are mine, exactly as submitted on October 16, 2026.
Paid for by Atiim 4 Portland City Council · P.O. Box 1992, Portland, ME 04104