Mark Finkelstein

Mark Finkelstein, a lifelong resident of Portland, and his wife Donna, are well-known in town. They have three children, Adam (age 22), Matthew (19) and Amanda (16). He presently serves on the Board of Selectmen. His working career included health care management, health care related real estate, and health care financing. Mark has served as past chairman of the Board of Finance.

Community Involvement

Corporator of Middlesex Hospital, member of Portland Democratic Town Committee, Life member of American College of Health Care Administrators, Selectman.

What do you like best about Portland?

I love the small town atmosphere and the closeness of our community. It allows for personal attention for our students in our schools and for taxpayers with Town officials. I also enjoy the relative safety of living here, and our centralized location with close proximity to larger cities and the shore. It's a great place to live.

What are the 3 issues in town that you are most inteested in?

1. Quality education for our young people.
2. Quality of town's infrastructure.
3. Responsible financial management of our town, including tax relief.

What do you hope to accomplish in your next term of office?

• Promote collaboration with Board of Education and school adminstrators to better understand the needs and finances of our school system.
• Analyse and conduct department reviews of staffing, short-term and long-term goals and compare results, expenditure levels and efficiency with that of other towns our size.
• Determine the feasibility of hiring a grant writer in an effort to reduce operational costs; analyze economic development commission's efforts and develop a plan to attract new business to increase the tax base. This includes establishing a business roundtable to bring business leaders and town officials together to identity a direction for the future.
• Restore confidence in Town government.

How will you make a political difference in town?

It depends a great deal on how one defiines "political." I believe that politics refers to the methods or tactics used in managing government as oposed to being either an art or science of governing. According to this definition, I have no interest in making a "political" difference in our town. However, I have seen politics get in the way of sound decision-making. I would like to reduce the amount of politics involved in the decision-making process, at least on the Board of Selectmen level.
      To be truly effective representatives, all the Selectmen need to work cohesively for the benefit of the town. The taxpayers deserve that. I have seen some progress over the last several months, but we tend to make one step forward and then fall back to political agendas.
      When I was first elected to the Board, one of my goals was to build some cohesiveness among the members, and put politics second to the needs of our town. I haven't given up. I would also like to see a more business-like approach to managing Town Hall. Once the budget has been set, we need to live within that budget. I'm not certain that this has been a priority in the past. It must be in the future.

Describe what you think local leadership is about.

A leader, in my opinion, is someone who shows the way, someone who guides the direction of an entitiy. In this case we're talking about the direction of our town. Again, I believe that we need to be more concerned with "town" leadership as opposed to "political" leadership.