Esther Kennedy Believes City Has Several Needs

City Council candidate: Esther Kennedy

Occupation: Director of Student Services, and Small Business owner of Esther’s Marina LLC.

Public service experience: Governors Committee for Marine Fisheries, Port Advisory Committee, Portsmouth Listens Master Plan, Portsmouth Listens Sustainability Fair Committee, Community Developmental Services, and Cooperative Extension 4-H Youth Programs.

Why are you running for office?: My first reason for running for office is to empower community members to support major community issues.  One component of this objective would be the finalizing of the sewage treatment plant plan with the EPA.  We must make sure that if the treatment plant stays on Pierce Island it stays within the current foot print. We also must fix it in an environmentally friendly way.  We cannot endanger our bay because of poor choices that we make today.  It is time for us to have secondary treatment for our sewage that will support our ecosystem rather than harm it.

My second reason is to support the Master Plan that residents like myself spent many hours in creating through the Portsmouth Listens process. For the plan to be successful we must rely on our city’s greatest asset which is our citizens. The citizens will be asked in the very near future to revise our Master Plan.  I will continue to support citizens’ actions like we recently witnessed with the potential closing of the Portsmouth pool.  I would like to see community member involvement to become more of the norm rather than the exception in our new Master Plan.  With the lease agreement to save the pool along with a few other symbiotic relationships the city has set a precedent that must be continued into the future. Given our demographics and current economic trends we will need to rely on individuals to volunteer and support areas that they have expertise.  Our public safety and public work departments will have to utilize volunteers to support the cities services. 

My third reason is our infrastructure. Our present infrastructure must be stabilized before we move ahead with any new commercial development that asks us to change our zoning laws with variances.  Many residents know that our infrastructure cannot support any new commercial development considering the problems with our sewage treatment plant, and public transportation just to name a few. As part of the Master Plan we need to consider what we would like to have our city look like in the future.  We must reach out to our neighborhoods for these answers and when the neighborhoods speak, we as a council must listen.

Lastly is the budget.  Unfortunately the way the council is set up we can only vote on the end product of the budget process. This has been a source of frustration for someone like myself who professionally works on a multimillion-dollar budget. Currently the Council has to be clear about their expectations. However, it has to be understood by City residents that the City budget is affected by State and County costs placed on the City.  The council must take an active role in persuading our County and State Representatives to level fund their budgets. We as a city must continue to look for revenues that can come from other sources besides taxes. 

A new council must began by analyzing and seeing if there are any benefits of new commercial development, and growth. Given the fact that less money is given back to the city by the state from the rooms and meals tax and the current trend of the decreasing assessment value of our commercial properties, we must evaluate future commercial development in relationship to increasing tourism and the cause and effect that it has on the Portsmouth Economy.

(Editor's note: Between now and , we will run profiles of the candidates running for City Council, School Board, and the Police and Fire commissions.)