All:
Happy New Year! While I am hopeful and excited about the new year, I cannot help but reflect on the trauma of the new year already due to events on the national level. The increase of truly disturbing immigration enforcement efforts around the country and especially in Minnesota have been weighing on me. The killing of Renee Good, an unarmed citizen who was not being pursued by law enforcement is quite simply beyond the pale. This unjustified killing should be subject to oversight and investigation by local, state, and federal officials.
In this newsletter I take some time to go through some of the work from 2025 and look forward to a new council term in 2026. I would like to acknowledge everyone who voted and participated in our democratic process last November. I am honored to serve the city and hope the new year will bring opportunities for continued focus on the most important issues, and greater effectiveness addressing them. I look forward to working with Mayor Siddiqui and the entire council and the City administration on many initiatives over the next term. I was disappointed not to be mayor or vice mayor, and stand with those who believe we need a better way to elect those positions. I hope to see another charter proposal to avoid the deeply problematic, undemocratic way we choose.
As a new year unfolds, I reflect on and review the last year and look ahead. Below are some notes on a few of the most important parts of my work last year and some thoughts on other notable events. It is a long review – and yet covers only some of the work! If you’re interested in digging into more of what we were able to accomplish this year (big or small), check out my newsletter archive here. I try to make my newsletters a place where folks can quickly get updated on all things Cambridge City Council and learn about how I think about all the issues. Please forward to others who may be interested in the newsletters.
I generally keep newsletters focused locally, but it’s impossible not to acknowledge that the actions of the federal government over the last year have radically changed a lot of what we do in this city. It has been a challenging time for the city, state, and country as we assess the impacts of cuts to budgets for social services and transportations and climate projects, increased immigration enforcement, attacks on higher education, and the fearmongering and vitriol that come from the government every week. It has been hard to keep up, and we have discussed these issues at almost every City Council meeting this year. In 2026, as in 2025, this City Council and this City administration will do all we can to protect vulnerable residents, continue important initiatives, and work hard to make this city a safe and equitable place to live.
A few quick notes before the 2025 recap:
As I have written about in numerous newsletters, I have been working to reform the way we regulate Short Term Rentals in Cambridge (AirBnb). As part of that work, I have asked the Inspectional Services Department to gather information from the community to help draft new ordinances and regulations to better respond to the needs of people who operate short term rentals and the neighbors who may be impacted. Please take a few minutes to take the Short-Term Rental Survey. This survey is for everyone (whether you operate a short term rental, live near one, or just live in Cambridge – we want your input!).
My first policy order of the new term focused on several large properties that the City owns. Over the years the City Council and City Manager have supported the acquisitions of a number of properties to be used for City operations, affordable housing, open space, and other important municipal functions. My intent with this order is to work with Mayor Siddiqui and City staff to schedule a roundtable meeting to discuss options for our entire portfolio so that decisions on best uses can be made in collaboration with the City Council and with the entire community in mind in a transparent way.
With the committee appointments made I look forward to continuing as Finance Co-Chair, working with Councillor Al-Zubi, and chairing Health and Environment. I also look forward to serving on other committees, and working on zoning, development, transportation and pushing forward on expanding universal child care, a passion and goal of mine for more than a decade.
Enjoy the long weekend in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and check the City website for several events and the MLK Day of Service and Learning.
If you made resolutions for the new year, I hope they are working to bring you satisfaction. Future newsletters will focus on regular council work – this week, enjoy the 2025 year in review and 2026 preview. If you have questions or comments or suggestions on these or anything else I’ve been working on, please reach out at any time.
Patty
2025 In Review
Committee Work
This term, I continued my work as co-chair of the Finance Committee and chair of the Health and Environment Committee and I take both of those roles very seriously. I see committee work on the council as an opportunity to work on issues in a way that is public, transparent, and collaborative. Part of the interesting thing about being a city councillor is that there isn’t really a how-to guide on how to be effective, and each councillor works in their own way. For me, a lot of my most effective work was through holding committee meetings to investigate issues and have discussions and then following up with policy proposals. I believe that when we bring people to the table in order to tackle complicated issues, we can work towards common goals together – and I think the results speak to that.
Finance and the City Budget
As chair of the Finance Committee, one of the largest roles is in chairing the statutorily required budget meetings every Spring. I have also consistently worked to expand the reach of those meetings, holding meetings in the fall and early spring that seek to improve Council and public input in the budget process and the long-term financial planning process of the City. To codify that process, I worked to include language in our new City Charter (more on that below) to ensure that those additional fall budget meetings were required by law and would continue to happen long after my time on council is over. As part of those early meetings, we worked with the City administration to set spending limits and tax levy limits to protect financial flexibility in a time of slowing development and when we are dealing with financial impacts due to changes in federal funding. Over my tenure as Finance chair, I have worked to improve transparency and accountability – one prominent example of that is the inclusion of SMART goals within dozens of department budgets. Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound goals allow the public to understand the purpose of budget allocations and hold us all accountable. You can see all the line items within the budget detailed in the FY26 Budget Book as well as in the Open Budget Data Portal (a helpful section to understand spending priorities is the “Consolidated Spending” section – pages I-12 to I-18 of the budget book). In addition to the regular budget process, this year we took the important step of creating a Federal Grant Stabilization Fund of $5 million, which will be used strategically as a stopgap to protect residents from dangerous budget cuts to essential housing and homelessness programs by the federal administration. We began to deal with the impacts of these cuts last year when we provided gift certificates to residents who had their SNAP benefits cut by the federal government.
Oversight on the City’s budget process includes not only authorizing the final budget that is set in the late spring, but also in managing impacts to actual tax bills, which go out every fall. I have been working with my colleagues to better help councillors and residents understand the impacts of spending and how it impacts different property classes, in both the residential and commercial sectors. The 4% budget growth for FY26 resulted in an 8% overall tax levy increase, which impacted individual tax bills in different ways depending on changes in assessed value. As Finance chair I have worked with the City administration to develop budget growth models in order to predict spending and tax levy needs. You can see some of that modelling in the meeting materials for the April 16 meeting I held on medium- and long-term budget planning. In that meeting and in the lead up to it, after a lot of challenging conversations, and working with City staff, we set budget growth limits year-over-year to 4%. It can be difficult to translate the tax levy increase into real dollars for every example; however, as included in those meeting materials, City staff are working to improve transparency and predictability for long-term financial planning.
I have and will continue to work to find efficiencies in our current budget in order to optimize spending. I have worked with staff across a number of departments to implement SMART goals and identify savings. That work will continue. And I am also looking at more creative solutions to improve revenue, including collecting municipal fines in a more effective way, through a function of M.G.L. Ch. 40U, which was developed by the state in order to help municipalities better collect fines related to public health and safety violations. Some of the intended uses are for short term rentals, dumpster and rodent violations, snow and ice removal, litter and refuse, and tenants rights notifications, among others. All of these functions are essential to a safe and healthy city, and so better enforcement of our existing regulations is important – and if we are not effectively collecting fines that we are issuing, we are losing essential public dollars that go towards funding existing services.
Climate Crisis and Environmental Issues
In the Health and Environment Committee I held 9 hearings in 2025 on topics including: reducing building emissions, reducing transportation emissions, floodplain regulations, reducing waste, protecting residential solar panels, combined sewer overflow planning, improving our urban forest and tree canopy, and electrification and energy capacity planning. These meetings focused on assessing current progress on a number of city goals and pushing us towards new goals. Ensuring we continue to make effective progress on stated goals requires consistent oversight and management, and committee meetings are an important way of checking in on progress and pushing the ball forward.
My work on the Health and Environment Committee last year led to the first ever Zero Emissions Transportation Plan (ZETP). Similar to the Net Zero Action Plan (for buildings) and the Zero Waste Master Plan (more on that below), the ZETP outlines a suite of strategies for reducing transportation-related emissions. It includes action items, SMART goals, and check-in points that will allow the Council to do necessary oversight to ensure we are making progress. I worked all year with City staff, experts, and community advocates to refine the plan to make it as effective and comprehensive as possible. I wrote about the final plan here.
In March I held meetings to pass updates to our Floodplain Regulations. The updated Floodplain Overlay Ordinance was passed in the spring, which brought us in line with updated state and federal regulations and will better position the City to deal with the realities of increased flooding and higher sea levels due to the climate crisis. Similarly, I have been and will continue to work in 2026 with City staff from DPW to review and update regulations related to stormwater management for private development.
In the fall I held a meeting to begin the process of updating the Urban Forest Master Plan (UFMP). This meeting included looking back on the status and effectiveness of the original UFMP and looking forward to consider what changes or adjustments to make to improve our urban forest and urban tree canopy. DPW staff are working with a consultant to review the latest tree canopy report, the results of the original UFMP, published in 2020, and will come back to the Health and Environment Committee next year with recommendations going forward.
I held several meetings throughout the last year on a novel approach to reduce impacts on existing solar panels due to neighboring development on the south side of solar energy systems. It is a complicated issue and I was not able to convince enough of my colleagues to continue with a compromise last term. With new development popping up in neighborhoods and new zoning in effect, it is essential that we continue to promote investment in renewable energy sources, but equally as important to work to protect residents who have already made that important investment in renewable energy. I believe we can do that in a way that has minimal impacts to housing development, and I believe the data collected over the last year reflects that. I will continue to push for innovative solutions and a compromise approach to reduce the annual solar radiation impact significantly without significantly impacting housing production.
The final Health and Environment Committee meeting of the year was on electrification and energy capacity planning. This meeting continued my ongoing work to expand electricity capacity, expand renewable energy production, discuss thermal energy network planning, and check in on BEUDO energy requirements. Meetings like this are essential in ensuring we meet citywide goals of electrification and energy reduction. After many years of work, BEUDO emissions reductions requirements will begin to phase in next year, and it’s essential that we do all we can to ensure we see real and tangible emissions reductions. Environmental justice and equity drive decisions on climate actions, which requires attention to the financial needs and capacity of all stakeholders including those in need of technical and financial assistance, and by providing access to funding and capital resources, Cambridge can incentivize decarbonization, reduce greenhouse gas emissions citywide, and provide a model of equitable access to action against climate change.
2025 also marked the launch of Sustainable Cambridge which will encompass all of Cambridge’s various efforts to address climate change while keeping the community welcoming, neighborly, and beautiful. The comprehensive program outlines goals for net zero carbon emissions, preparing for extreme weather events, how residents can improve energy efficiency in their homes and can improve our urban forest by volunteering, how to find help in an emergency, and more information on all our plans, data, and lots of interactive maps. This consolidated effort will improve accessibility for residents, improve coordination between City departments, and help us hit our climate goals.
Finally, I want to highlight the City’s finalizing a new rate for Cambridge Community Electricity, the City’s electricity buying program. As a result of a continued push by Council to invest in clean energy, and the hard work of City staff making those investments a reality, the City of Cambridge is able to offer renewable electricity to Cambridge residents and small businesses at a lower rate than they could purchase from Eversource, and with prices that are locked in for a term of three years. Participants in Cambridge Community Electricity directly support the development of new renewable energy projects. All participants supported the creation of a solar project at Graham and Parks School in Cambridge. Participants in Standard Green and 100% Green also helped enable the development of a new solar project in Illinois and a new wind project in North Dakota through innovative virtual power purchase agreements (VPPAs). Because these projects are located in electric grids where generating electricity creates more carbon emissions than in New England, these clean projects avoid more emissions than similar projects in New England. It’s a novel approach that took significant work over many years, and I’m proud to have played a role in pushing Cambridge towards investments in renewable energy that will also help residents save money – and showing the rest of the country what is possible through sustained investment in renewable resources.
Public Health and Safety
Back in September I held a Health and Environment Committee meeting to discuss Combined Sewer Overflow (CSOs) planning (meeting materials, video recording). It was a great meeting and allowed direct dialogue between City staff, City Council and the three different advocacy groups that presented – the Charles River Watershed Association (CRWA), the Mystic River Watershed Association (MyRWA), and Save the Alewife Brook (StAB). City staff were able to deliver a very detailed presentation on current and previous work as well as how they are continuing to plan for future infrastructure improvements in different areas of the city. The result of the meeting was a policy order that passed, asking City staff to present a matrix of options along with a cost-benefit analysis on a way forward to eliminate CSOs. In addition, the motion asked staff to consider putting together a commission or working group with advocates and subject matter experts to improve public participation for these huge infrastructure investments. DPW staff then delivered a report outlining the details of the variance process that is being undertaken by the EPA and MassDEP in partnership with Cambridge, MWRA and Somerville. The document goes through all of the procedural steps the City has taken in the last few months and upcoming timelines and decision points. The document also includes recommendations for improving stormwater management regulations for private development, which I have been discussing with staff over the last few months, as well as the announcement of an advisory committee to work with City staff on CSO Control and Stormwater Management. The formal makeup of the advisory committee will be announced in early 2026, but will likely have a wider scope than just CSOs, and will include representatives from watershed advisory groups and technical experts. These are important changes I have been advocating for many years now, and I’m grateful to other local advocates and watershed organizations for continuing to push us forward on a faster and greener path to clean waterways.
After several years and many meetings of the Health and Environment Committee, I was pleased to pass the second iteration of the Zero Waste Master Plan (ZWMP 2.0) in 2025. Over that time I met with staff numerous times, and worked to include input from stakeholders around across the spectrum including residents, advocates, business leaders, and neighboring communities. All of those efforts have led to a final draft that represents a big step forward for Cambridge in terms of planning for waste reduction. The Recycling Advisory Committee worked closely with City staff throughout the process to build in community input and advise on best practices. The Climate Committee also had significant input into the process, recognizing that waste reduction and recycling diversion are not only a public health necessity, but also a meaningful step towards emissions reduction. That feedback and engagement have strengthened the plan and the identified strategies. Throughout all of our planning documents I have advocated for a stronger reliance on SMART goals, ensuring that we have measurables to keep us accountable. The report outlines the successes of the first ZWMP, which led to a 30% residential trash reduction in 2020 and a 36% residential trash reduction in 2024. This is great progress, but more work and additional strategies are required to meet our 2050 goal of 80% reduction. The ZWMP 2.0 provides an update on ZWMP 1.0 strategies, establishes an interim residential waste reduction goal for 2030 (50%), identifies additional strategies that will be needed in order to meet our waste reduction goals. The ZWMP 2.0 also expands our goals of waste reduction to addressing commercial waste, which was not part of the ZWMP 1.0 strategies (mostly because of the large unknown). We will begin to address that large unknown by requiring annual Zero Waste Plans for large residential and commercial buildings (buildings that utilize private trash hauling) and also require food waste diversion for residential and commercial buildings. The ZWMP 2.0 contains a suite of strategies and associated goals and the City will continue to measure the effectiveness of the 18 strategies and adapt to changes in the zero waste landscape as they arise. And looking forward, the City will re-evaluate strategies and the 2050 Zero Waste goal in 2030 with a ZWMP 3.0, which will be informed by a fuller understanding of the City’s commercial and institutional sectors, and will establish goals for those sectors. There are a lot of great top-lines in this plan that I am proud of and that we will need to continue to push for. I want to also recognize that this ZWMP 2.0 represents a lot of compromise with City staff who need to also take into account the realities of vendor capabilities, small business feasibility, and trust-building with the community. I worked closely with City staff over the last two years to make sure this update was as aggressive as possible on waste reduction and plastics reduction. I wrote extensively about the ZWMP 2.0 in my June newsletter.
Related to reducing waste is the impact it has on rodent populations. For those of us who have lived in the city for a long time, rodent issues are not new news, but if we are not proactive about tackling the issue, then rodent populations can and do explode in a very short time. I have worked with a number of residents in different areas of the city over years, connecting them with City resources for rat prevention. I have also filed policy orders and gotten important updates on rodent control efforts citywide. Reducing access to food waste is the most important action that can be taken to combat rodent populations, and the ZWMP 2.0 will over time improve food waste diversion for residents, restaurants, and commercial buildings. Mandatory food waste diversion will dramatically reduce food access for rodents. I am working with City staff on pilot food waste programs for larger buildings as well, which can be a barrier to the usual City programming. Additionally, as part of an ongoing initiative DPW will continue to install fully enclosed BigBelly bins to combat rodent activity and prevent litter, along with compacting trash, and allowing DPW to optimize waste pick-ups.
Zoning and Housing
I wrote extensively about the multifamily housing zoning petition in my newsletter back in February if you’d like to review any of the details. It was hugely debated over nearly a year, and allowed multifamily housing development in all residential zones of the city, greater density (which means how many units are in a building), and 4-story development on all lot sizes, with 6 stories allowed for inclusionary projects (which means 20% of units are affordable, most likely to middle income folks) on lots larger than 5,000 sqft. The zoning petition passed 8-1 and I voted in favor. I enthusiastically voted yes, even though I recognize that the process and the specifics could have been better. Voting for no change, which essentially endorsed the status quo, was unacceptable to me. After all, I take some pride in the fact that the process to allow multi-family housing citywide started with a policy order I sponsored in December of 2020. This zoning change is the most consequential in decades and represents an important compromise that will, on the whole, benefit the city. In addition to the changes in density and height, these petitions also included streamlined permitting and simplification of some of the zoning code. I worked hard on the compromise and respect all of us who worked collaboratively to amend the original proposal. I remain disappointed my colleagues did not follow my lead on protections for existing solar arrays, but I will continue to look for creative solutions and continue to push for compromise there.
The work on multifamily housing and zoning review did not end with the petition. It will continue to be up to the Council and City administration to review results and impacts on housing production, on affordability, on open space, on tree canopy, and on transportation, utilities, and essential services, and adjust over time if necessary. I sponsored a policy order, which led to an interim report on housing production trends in the first six months since the Council passed the zoning amendments. The zoning changes do include a structured process for ongoing review and public reporting of housing production across the city, with an annual housing report beginning in 2026 to track year-over-year changes in the housing stock, and a five-year evaluation beginning in 2030 to assess on longer-term trends as well as other public planning objectives, but the interim report was helpful in providing an update to the Council and the community on the changing housing production landscape and an early understanding of whether newly proposed projects align with the goals of the Multifamily Housing Zoning amendments, which include the creation of more housing overall and increased affordable housing, as well as the preservation of existing affordable housing.
I wrote extensively about my position on zoning along Massachusetts Avenue and Cambridge Street, which you can read here. The long-story short on Mass Ave is that I was broadly supportive of very large upzoning, in line with the recommendations that came out of the Mass Ave Planning Study (MAPS). We made a few changes to the original petition to improve streetscape design, definitions of publicly beneficial open space, and active groundfloor uses, which I believe significantly improved the petition, but the majority of the council wanted to go above the recommendations of MAPS and opted to increase heights further. I was not convinced that 12 stories was necessary to spur development and that the original recommendations were viable – and that if development truly stagnated that we would be able to reassess down the road. I worry that too many of my colleagues were overly impacted by developer concerns over construction costs and that those concerns were not expressed at the time of the MAPS process or earlier in the zoning calendar. As a result of that vote, I voted against the petition. While I didn’t vote for the final proposal, I am broadly supportive of the additional zoning flexibility on Mass Ave and I do think it will be a net positive for the City, and I was committed to the community recommendations that were delivered by the MAPS process that the City Council specifically requested, and believe that should have been respected. And as I wrote about at the time, this petition does have a lot of good and does address community concerns. Some residents have concerns about the scale of the large buildings: I do too, and it’s why I ensured that stepback functions were built into the zoning. Step-backs can help address shadows, scale, and airflow along a corridor – allowing consistent street-level streetscapes but adding variability to the built corridor. Some residents have had concerns about affordability: every building over 7 stories will have 20% inclusionary units, and if the inclusionary zoning policy changes, I am committed to ensuring the Mass Ave corridor reflects the community desire to have significant affordable units. Some residents have expressed concerns with the higher heights expressed in the Porter Square area. It’s important to note that the heights in Porter Square are different from the rest of Mass Ave because they are part of a PUD district. That means that development is not as-of-right as in other areas. In Porter Square, all large developments would be part of a public negotiation with developers and City staff that would include significant investments in open space and public benefits – similar to what will be happening with Healthpeak in the Alewife Quandrange. Do I think this zoning is perfect? No, and I voted against it for the reasons above, but I still believe it will do a lot to improve our ability to construct housing along Mass Ave, a major corridor, with high frequency public transportation.
We will continue to discuss Cambridge Street in the new year, after passing over the petition at the end of last term. I am happy the new Council will have an opportunity to weigh in on this petition, which had a slightly more truncated community process than the Mass Ave petition. I am broadly supportive of the petition currently (3 stories for non-residential development, and 8 stories for residential development with active ground floor use). And as has been mentioned, requiring active groundfloor uses will require an additional petition, which I support, and we have heard from the business community that active groundfloor use requirements will provide more opportunities to retain longstanding businesses, even if buildings are redeveloped. The Planning Board also concurred with this approach, suggesting that without the required active ground floor, that 6-story residential-only buildings may be more economical than 8 story mixed use buildings, which could lead to a net loss of active ground floor uses along the corridor. So while I support the intentions, the petition as-written is incomplete because it doesn’t include the required active ground floor use. In the new term I will be advocating for refiling the petition to incorporate the additional changes in a clean petition, rather than passing an incomplete petition with the intent of correcting it shortly after. I am committed to passing zoning changes for Cambridge street that add housing, enliven community uses, and provide opportunities for local businesses, and I think a new petition will do that.
Large zoning processes like these can be difficult and at times divisive, but over the course of last year I was heartened to see so many in the community agree on so much. We agree on much more than just the fact of building multifamily housing everywhere, including the need to maintain and protect affordability, the need to support the affordable housing production of the Affordable Housing Trust with inclusionary development through private development, the need to protect and develop open space, and the need for design guidelines and design review while also streamlining the process by removing common variance issues. This broad agreement can be a huge benefit to the community as we continue through this process and monitor the effects going forward, which we will do with yearly reporting, starting this spring.
Other housing initiatives I worked on this term relate to protecting and incentivizing naturally occurring affordable housing, reviewing housing production and inclusionary housing results, investigating social housing models, eliminating forced tenant broker fees, and we passed a zoning change for the BioMed property at 320 Charles Street, which will result in significant community benefits (and eventually led us towards a process of improving how we craft community benefits zoning agreements).
Finally, I continue to work on better regulations for Short-Term Rental units like AirBnb, and I hope to finalize zoning changes this year to better enforce the ordinance. As I mentioned in the intro, please take some time to fill out the Short-Term Rental Survey to provide input into how the ordinance changes will be developed.
Transportation Highlights
In June City Council voted on two policy orders that asked the City manager to delay or permanently suspend the installation of bike lanes on Broadway as part of the Broadway Safety Improvement Project. I voted against those policy orders and the City will continue to install bike lanes on Broadway as part of a multi-part safety improvement project. Many hundreds of residents wrote to the Council and to me personally both for and against bike lanes and the subsequent removal of on-street parking. I sent out a response to all those who wrote into me that you can read here. Bike lanes continue to be a divisive and complicated issue. I believe in the vision of the Cycling Safety Ordinance and I continue to try to work with residents and City staff to mitigate the negative impacts on neighbors who struggle to deal with externalities on parking, car traffic, and pedestrian crossings. Shortly after, I wrote a policy order to explore creative solutions that reduce car dependency, while expanding access to parking options nearby Broadway for those who will still need their cars. Some of this work is ongoing (I have previously filed policy orders – here and here – to advocate for resident access in City lots, especially school lots), some is new, and some is to reemphasize efforts. I don’t expect all residents to be able to give up their cars and continue to live comfortably. I want to work to get residents who can utilize better public transportation options (hence my efforts on better citywide shuttle options) and to take advantage of more and safer bike lanes to do so. As more residents are able to feel safe in bike lanes and feel comfortable utilizing public transportation, more residents will be able to live without a car, freeing up important space for residents who need it. I also filed a policy order that seeks to limit parking permits issued for new, transit-oriented developments, which can hopefully limit some of the impacts on parking from new developments along mass-transit corridors.
I have long pushed for efforts to improve public transportation within the city. When the MBTA was rolling out the Better Bus Project I worked with residents and community leaders to advocate for improvements of the MBTA bus system within Cambridge. I have also been working to review existing private shuttles to see if we can improve options for all residents to get around the city via public transportation. In March I filed a policy order asking the City Manager to explore options for a municipal transit pilot program. On June 18 the Transportation and NLTP committees met to review the launch of a citywide shuttle and transit gap study that will analyze existing public transportation options throughout the city and present options for coordination, consolidation, and expansion of shuttle options. A fare-free citywide shuttle is an option that can supplement existing MBTA offerings, consolidate dozens of existing programs, and better provide for equitable transportation within the city.
After a lot of work over the last few years, the Council voted unanimously to file a Home Rule Petition to allow for the use of automated parking enforcement in Cambridge. The council began talking about this issue several years ago when I brought forward a policy order to lead the discussion. The Harvard Crimson wrote about the proposal here. In that time, I have worked with the Law Department, discussed with other cities who have implemented this technology (or have wanted to), and have discussed with vendors and city staff, so I’m glad we’re finally at the point of requesting state authority. This is a great opportunity for us to improve enforcement of dangerous parking violations in bus stops, crosswalks, bike lanes, fire lanes, and hydrants, and other important uses. These kinds of violations can not only be dangerous for pedestrians and other road users, but also lead to double parking, congestion, and chaotic road conditions. This is technology that is allowed in other cities in the state and in the region and will allow us to better enforce dangerous parking violations in bus stops, crosswalks, and other high-use areas. Somerville has had success with their recent program for automated enforcement at several bus stops and has improved issues related to pedestrian safety, congestion, and dangerous driving. This is a no-brainer and I look forward to passing the home rule and piloting our own system.
Another safety measure we worked on last year was the launching of the Speed Hump Pilot Program. This program is many years in the making and is designed to make residential streets safer and more comfortable for everyone. It is partially funded by Participatory Budgeting and will deliver 48 new speed humps on key residential streets citywide. Additionally, following many years of discussion, policy orders, and work by Cambridge Department of Transportation (CDOT) staff, the City Manager delivered the first results of the Roadway Safety Audit Program, which combines an intersection safety audit with a program for rapid response based on serious crashes. The Higher Crash Location protocol will work to proactively identify, assess, and mitigate the most dangerous intersections in need of safety improvements. The report identifies the intersections with the highest crash locations. The report outlines detailed intersection improvements to the top 10 list and then further lists the top 75 intersections for prioritization. The Rapid Response Protocol will evaluate locations where fatal or serious crashes occur, and have produced short-term improvements for the locations of two fatal crashes last year. This report is extensive and the methodologies will improve over time as more data is collected. To date, CDOT staff have completed crash summaries of over 350 intersections and as a result we now know the areas of most significant concern, especially for bicycles and pedestrians. This is a big step for the city and for improving safety at intersections citywide in a systematic and consistent manner, and I will be working to ensure regular reporting on progress.
Following a policy order that I sponsored, several discussions with Transportation staff and the Law Department, the City Manager has come forward with a recommendation in May to increase the cost of the resident parking permit sticker from $25 per year to $75 per year. There will also be a low income-eligible option, which will remain at $25 per year. I held a committee meeting in December 2023 to discuss options for amending parking fees and regulations throughout the City in order to further support the City’s goals of low carbon travel and I worked with the Law Department to understand the landscape of state law as it relates to implementing different fees. One important change will be to raise parking permitting fees to accurately reflect the real costs associated with the permitting system within the city. Unfortunately that change has not yet gone into effect and we are still subsidizing our permit parking program. I look forward to rectifying that early in 2026. At this point, the City Manager does not recommend raising the parking permit fees for larger vehicles that take up more space on the public right of way, which I had pushed for.
Over the years, the City Council and the community have expressed support for more pedestrianization opportunities and street closures in the area of Harvard Square and I have been working with community leaders, local businesses, and City staff to come up with creative solutions to enhance the area by piloting street closures when possible. After passing a policy order and working with City staff, I am proud to see that Lower Bow Street will be permanently closed to car traffic starting in Spring 2026 to coincide with the outdoor dining season. After years of pushing this idea, I am glad that staff have agreed to this change. I hope this change will enliven the area for years to come and am proud to have worked for so long on this. The Crimson and Boston.com wrote about the planned pedestrianization.
Finally, I continue to work on issues with safety and accessibility of micromobility devices. I have filed policy orders (here and here) seeking to address the changing landscape of micromobility devices in our city. It’s clear that in our fast-changing transportation environment, we need to do some legal research to understand the city’s authority to regulate use of electric micromobility devices. It is very exciting that e-bikes are now finally part of the BlueBike system and that people are using e-scooters, e-skateboards, and other micromobility devices. As the policy order noted clearly, the expansion of these types of transportation options supports our goals of emission pollution reduction, and hopefully more people will use these transportation options instead of single occupancy vehicles. And there needs to be a shared understanding of what limits may be placed – speed limits and allowed locations on all such devices. We received a report back from the Law Department outlining some of the state-level issues with regulation and I worked with City staff to provide input into the MassDOT Special Commission on Micromobility, so that we are able to better regulate safety citywide as we cater to an increasing diversity of transportation options.
Public Safety Highlights
As Finance Chair, one of my roles is oversight of the Cambridge Police budget, and I have held a specific meeting every year to review the CPD budget individually. After the weeks of budget hearings, the only department I voted against, along with Councillors Siddiqui and Sobrinho-Wheeler, was the Police Department budget. CPD was one of the few departments to increase their budget, rising by 3% and four additional FTEs at a time when programmatic spending should be shifting more towards our non-police emergency response team, CARE, and through other non-profit support like HEART. The four additional FTEs are due to implementation of the Body-Worn Camera program. While I support the program and the initiative, my research into PERF recommendations and programs in other cities led me to believe we could implement the program with fewer additional officers – and further, we should have been informed earlier on in the process of program development about the full costs of implementation. I had concerns with other mid-year free cash appropriation requests from CPD as well, which I think should have been budgeted through the annual budget process, and the purchase of new firearms was not something I believe is needed at this time. Also, I was disappointed by the launch of a social work co-response team without informing the Council and without coordination with our existing Community Safety Department. The record showed there was not communication, despite me being assured there had been. We need trust and transparency, and that did not happen with this initiative. That fact raised concerns about transparency and communication. I will continue to work with Commissioner Elow, who has pledged to continue to improve transparency and work to improve coordination between CPD and CSD.
This year we also worked through difficult public safety responses to dangerous incidents, worked to develop a policy for release of body-worn camera footage, and worked through difficult questions of surveillance technology, including Automated License Plate Recognition, Locked Device Access Tool, and Remotely Piloted Aerial Vehicle. As issues with federal immigration enforcement continue to arise, I continue to work to ensure that all surveillance technology that we utilize is only used for criminal enforcement by CPD, not for immigration enforcement by federal officials. These are complicated and sensitive issues and I respect and trust the Cambridge Police Department to continue the good work of improving public safety, and they continue to respect my oversight role and continue to work with the Council and the community to better serve the residents of Cambridge.
I was proud to support and vote for a policy order this year reaffirming the City of Cambridge as a Sanctuary City, not only for immigrants, but also for all marginalized communities, including transgender and nonbinary people. In this time of attacks on all marginalized groups, and an intense attack on transgender people, it is important to stand up and stand for welcoming and support. The fear in our community is heartbreaking, and I know that people are hurting and scared. I have friends and family members directly affected by this concerted effort to discriminate against transgender people and I am glad the city council unanimously passed the resolution in strong support of declaring our city a safe place. It is up to all of us to be good neighbors, take care of those around us, and protect the most vulnerable from bigotry and discrimination. For a little more depth on our discussion and decision, read The Crimson article. The Welcoming City Ordinance was adopted by Cambridge in 2020 in order to protect residents from undue persecution and ensure that the City of Cambridge does not assist in enforcing federal immigration law. Further, it ensures that all personas are treated equally by the City, without consideration of immigration status. This ordinance was adopted prior to recent and increasingly aggressive federal actions, and we need to consider ways of strengthening the ordinance to ensure the continued safety and protection of all Cambridge residents. I cosponsored a policy order that asks for ordinance language that would strengthen our ability to protect residents and avoid inadvertently assisting ICE agents with dangerous or unlawful enforcement efforts. Following that policy order, we worked with the City Manager, the Law Department, the Police Department, and advocates to pass amendments to our Welcoming Community Ordinance. The ordinance is supported by our public safety officers, since they recognize that their job is to keep Cambridge safe. These ordinance changes will help Cambridge police officers better support and protect all the people in our community who may be in danger. I have also worked to ensure that Cambridge publishes and advertises the Know Your Rights page, which offers training to help residents and service providers better protect themselves and their neighbors and ensure that Cambridge remains a welcoming and supportive community for all residents. I want to note that the City does follow federal law, despite false claims by the federal government about our sanctuary city status as being in violation of federal law. What we don’t do is have our local officials do the job of the federal government. That fact often gets lost in the discussion. We believe, with strong police support, that such a policy keeps our community safer.
Other Highlights
In addition to all the work in the categories above, there are always other issues that come up throughout the year. I worked consistently throughout the year to work with the City and institutional partners to defend Cambridge and our university partners from attacks on higher education by the federal government. Defense of higher education, academic independence, and freedom is not just a moral issue for me, it is also a defense of local institutions that provide jobs and community for our region and can have significant impacts on our local budget, workforce, and residents.
The City Council was also put in a difficult position this year in working through issues of sex work and sex trafficking. I filed a policy order which called for a Human Services and Veterans Committee meeting to discuss sex work and sex trafficking. It’s important to acknowledge the context of the conversation. The main reason we are discussing this issue is due to discovering last year that there was a brothel operating in Cambridge, and then more recently, the revelations that a colleague was implicated. I made a statement with three other colleagues on this issue. We are all disappointed we have to navigate this issue through the context of the City Council, but the community is discussing this issue and the Council should not shy away from this important issue. I want to support the Council furthering the conversation about consent, sex work and trafficking, which we can do in the committee meeting. That an illegal brothel was operating in Cambridge for many years is a concern of public safety and of civil rights, and worthy of a frank conversation with community advocates and experts in women’s issues, immigrant issues, and public safety professionals. The City has led a process over the last year, since the news of the brothel came out, that has included a group of diverse stakeholders across the community to develop a comprehensive, multi-sector response to this issue. The meeting included advocates on all sides of the issue, representatives from CRLS, and the Commission on the Status of Women. I left the conversation with many complicated thoughts and questions, and I was glad to have participated in this important conversation around sex work, objectification, workers rights, and more. It’s important to remember that these issues are close to home here in Cambridge and that we have an obligation to protect all our residents from objectification and harm, especially the most vulnerable. Wherever one stands with regard to legalizing sex work, we do need as a state to do more to provide safety for sex workers.
We also had to navigate the impact of organizational changes to the Equity and Inclusion Department, which led to the laying off of seven staff. I filed a policy order, followed by a response from the City Manager and a Government Operations Committee meeting (which you can watch here). This decision, along with the way the firings were conducted was nothing short of a complete shock to the Council and the community. I am not opposed to strategic thinking in management and I am open to having hard discussions about staff reductions – I have been clear about that; however, these firings were decided without input from the community, the council, City staff, or the commissions. They were done abruptly, insensitively, and without regard for the longtime commitment these employees have made to the entire city. The City of Cambridge can do better by its employees and its residents than a corporate restructuring. We deserve more and we promise more. We could have had a clearer and public process for streamlining boards and commissions, and we could have had other announcements about budget concerns that could have been discussed leading up to the FY27 budget, and these conversations could have happened in executive session if necessary, but this timing and this decision were a very disappointing way of blindsiding City staff and the Council.
Another complicated issue we had to work through was the structural concerns at 221 Mount Auburn Street (Riverview Condominium Building). The City Council and City administration held several meetings to discuss the issue, work with residents, community members, and impacted businesses. After many meetings and much discussion, the building is being taken down this month.
There was also a lot of good to come out of 2025, including the first ever Cambridge PorchFest & Deckfest, following a policy order I sponsored in May. It was a great event over two days and I look forward to continuing the tradition and bringing lively music and fun to Cambridge as often as possible.
2025 was also the year that we adopted a brand new charter after over 80 years. The Council convened a Charter Review Committee over two years ago to review the existing Cambridge charter along with consultants from the Collins Center (who have been working with hundreds of cities and towns across Massachusetts on various charter-reform and good-government projects). The existing charter is more than 80 years old and is a very convoluted document with references to laws and court decisions that are nearly 100 years old as well (Cambridge Day wrote this helpful article as well). The Charter Review Committee delivered a report back to City Council with a number of recommendations to consider in a new charter document. The Council then deliberated over the course of the last year to pursue a number of changes – in the end, the Council decided to make a few small procedural changes, but decided to take the step of redrafting the existing charter in modern, clear language that reflects the actual workings of the current City government and the state laws that regulate it. A lot of more substantial changes were discussed, but ultimately the council decided to keep 95% of the existing charter requirements in place, but redraft the document into modern and accessible language. The charter then went to the state legislature and the governor for approval and was then put on the ballot for voters to decide on. I wrote about the new charter more substantively in a previous newsletter and I wrote this letter to the state legislature that outlines a few of the specific changes, and I am happy the new charter was adopted in November. Bottom line – this new charter is accessible, clear, and modern, and also sets up clear expectations for structured reviews every 10 years if voters decide to make more substantial changes in the future. I am proud to have worked on the new charter and I look forward to implementing the changes to improve accountability, accessibility, and effectiveness of government.
Looking Forward to 2026
There is a lot to look forward to and a lot of important work to get done in 2026, and a lot of opportunities to build upon previous years’ work. I am committed to continuing the work of financial oversight and capital planning to ensure financial stability going forward. We have more work to do to ensure our climate policies are implemented successfully and we have more work to do to improve our various roadmaps, including the Urban Forest Master Plan, which I will continue to work on this year. We need to continue planning for climate resiliency and road safety. And we also have to continue to support housing supply and affordability. I want to continue to press on long-term solutions to improve the lives of residents including supporting municipal broadband services and expanding access to affordable childcare.
I will continue to strive for a balanced approach to our many efforts to improve the city. I am committed to hearing and listening to neighborhood voices and work towards better communication from the City administration. I am also committed to working through the difficult financial discussions regarding prioritizing spending and insisting on more transparency and fairness with our spending. We also have to do more evaluation of programs and assess the effectiveness of our spending. I will continue to work with the City Manager to improve government function and culture throughout the entire city.
Thank You
Thank you to everyone for reading. If there are any topics you want me to cover in future newsletters, I’m always happy for the input! As always, please feel free to reach out to my aide, Patrick (phayes@cambridgema.gov), or me for any of your City Council needs.
You can find all previous newsletters on my website. Please share with anyone you think would be interested: https://pattynolan.org/news/