We’re off and running! Last week I and 21 other candidates (including all nine incumbents) “pulled papers” to officially declare we are running in the 2015 election for Cambridge City Council. We (and any other prospective candidates who pull papers between now and the end of the month) must get at least 50 registered voters in Cambridge to nominate us in order to see our names listed on the November 3rd ballot. Each voter may only sign one set of nomination papers for the council race, so if you sign mine please don’t sign for any other candidates and vice versa. I will be out collecting signatures this week. We all have until July 31 to turn in our nomination papers with up to 100 valid signatures.
Emerge Mass 2015 bootcamp participants
My sense of urgency was heightened after spending 25 hours last week at the Emerge Mass bootcamp training for female Democratic candidates. For the next four months my top priorities will be to knock on as many doors as possible to ask for #1 votes and to continue raising money from supporters. I’m proud to say that my campaign remains independent of donations from large real estate developers and their associates, unlike those of most of the incumbents. These contributions raise questions about influence when it is the Council who has the final say on zoning petitions that could provide substantial benefits. If you want to see the which special interests are donating to the incumbents, go to the Office of Campaign and Political Finance’s searchable website and enter the candidate’s name in the “Recipient (Filer)” field.
Apart from the immense value of the Emerge training curriculum, I found inspiration in the life stories and motivations of all other other participants, two in particular. One, Annissa Essaibi George, is a high school teacher and knitting store owner from Dorchester who is making her second run for one of the four at-large seats on the Boston City Council (she finished fifth in 2013). I admire Annissa for getting back in the saddle after a tough loss and for attending the training to hone her skills for another very competitive race. The other standout was the youngest member of our Emerge cohort: 23-year-old Judith Garcia, who is running for a seat on the Chelsea City Council. Judith has enormous promise and an inspiring personal story — she was raised in Chelsea by a non-English speaking mother who has worked for 25 years in the Kayem Foods factory making Fenway franks. Judith worked hard to get herself into AP classes in high school and to win a scholarship to Wheaton College, where she concentrated in urban studies. Judith is dynamic, smart, poised, and passionate about advocating for underserved residents, as she begins what I have no doubt will be a successful political career by running in a ward with fewer than 400 registered voters, many of them immigrants like her mother.
Finally, I would like to share below my comments on Monday night when the Council’s Ordinance Committee (on which all nine councillors sit) held a joint hearing with the Planning Board to discuss the Volpe re-zoning petition.
I think the conceptual massing studies should have included all the other projects in the pipeline in the immediate vicinity area — 88 Ames St, MIT’s 6 new towers, and the 1m s.f. of up-zoning the Cambridge Redevelopment Authority is proposing for its MXD District. Shadow, wind transit and traffic studies should be produced for the cumulative development, not piecemeal. It seems the zoning has gotten ahead of the planning. If we were planning first, we’d be talking about what we want to see developed for the community’s benefit — here are just a few ideas: an early childhood ed center, a public library or media center, an indoor recreation center with a public pool, an all-season public market space.
What a 1,000-foot Volpe tower might look like from across the river
Instead height is dominating the discussion, and it seems we are being told that we can only have a significant open space if we accept a massive up-zoning and very tall buildings. A 1,000-ft tower would stick up like a sore thumb — or a middle finger — disrupting the skyline for miles around. The models with 350 to 500 foot buildings lining Broadway show open space that is deeply shadowed. Are we being set up to accept a 1000-foot eyesore in order to have some sunlight and the significant public open space that was promised in prior planning studies? Any space in the tallest tower in town — whether it’s 300, 500 or 1000 feet, commercial or residential — will be premium priced for the bragging rights and the views.
I think that building 65% commercial will only add to the demand for housing across the city and will put pressure on other neighborhoods to supply it. The lack of workforce housing has been the downside of the Kendall growth engine all along. Are we repeating the same mistake? Even though 40% is “bold” relative to other PUDs, we’re already operating with a housing deficit in Kendall. Also 50 three-bedroom units out of a 1,000 seems quite low and destined to drive more families out of Cambridge.
I don’t see how we can justify reducing the percentage of low income affordable housing to 10% — this adds urgency to the housing committee’s work to increase the inclusionary percentage. If we have to wait several years for the government’s building to be completed, I hope by then the linkage fee will be substantially more than the $12 that was just voted on because that amount was only half of what the expert said would be needed just to stay even with the current need for affordable housing.
One of the questions that I hope will be addressed in the master planning process is how large a city can Cambridge become without losing its human scale character and livability, and how quickly can we get there without big infrastructure improvements to accommodate more people and traffic? The sky is not the limit, as some seem to think.
Out with my campaign bike on Sunday afternoon
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