By Alexa Cimino,Editor

Copyright dailymail

A Republican candidate for Bangor City Council in Maine is vowing to slash spending and homeless services, warning city policies have fueled drugs, crime and vagrancy.

Colleen O’Neal, one of nine candidates competing for three open council seats, said Bangor has wasted taxpayer money on failed programs while driving up crime, homelessness and taxes.

A former emergency management worker who now serves as a case manager for the Penobscot Nation Healing to Wellness Court, O’Neal said crime is the number one issue she intends to tackle if elected.

‘The policies of the city have done nothing other than increase crime, increase drug trafficking, increase homelessness and increase taxes,’ O’Neal said.

She blasted the city’s extensive network of homeless and addiction services, accusing nonprofits of failing to deliver results despite generous contracts.

‘This is going to sound controversial, but I think we need to cut back on the services, because there are tons of services for the homeless, but there’s no accountability,’ she told Bangor Daily News.

‘I want to see some accountability and some numbers from these volunteer agencies, because right now it doesn’t look like they’re helping anyone at all.’

O’Neal argued that Bangor’s current approach has only made the problem worse.

‘They’ve in essence created a Mecca for the homeless,’ she told the local outlet. ‘So, with that comes drugs, with that comes crime.’

She said opioid settlement funds should be spent on rehab programs rather than on maintaining the status quo.

She also took aim at needle exchange programs operated by nonprofits, linking Bangor’s ongoing HIV outbreak to their failures.

That stance runs counter to federal health data – the CDC says syringe services reduce HIV and hepatitis C infections by about 50 percent – but O’Neal insisted, ‘It doesn’t look like they’re helping anyone at all.’

Her campaign also zeroes in on taxpayer spending. She slammed the $230,000 Streetplus contract to patrol downtown and the $750,000 property tax reevaluation contract with KRT Appraisal, arguing the latter should have been phased in incrementally over several years.

She also called for the City Council to exercise more oversight of the school department budget earlier in the process, saying it would prevent ‘wasteful spending’ that ultimately falls to residents.

Though most decisions around schools fall to the school committee, O’Neal has made education central to her platform.

On her campaign Facebook page, she urges residents angry at ‘schools that continue to indoctrinate our children’ to support her candidacy.

She told the Bangor Daily News that schools ‘need to get back to reading and writing and arithmetic’ rather than teaching about gender and sexual orientation.