Council updates – addressing gun violence at the summer meeting

Updates from last week’s meetings:

The Public Safety committee meeting was focused on the HEART proposal, an exciting initiative that is spearheaded by The Black Response. The city has been working to include HEART in its planning for alternative emergency response. The plan is moving forward – and I hope that the initiative will be able to be in pilot form starting this fall. Today’s Boston Globe had a front-page article on Mayor Janey moving ahead with using social workers instead of police officers in some emergency response situations – which is along the lines of what Cambridge is exploring. I am glad to see a number of cities and towns doing this since we all need to re-imagine policing if we are to address the systemic issues. And as always, I want Cambridge to be a leader when it comes to smart, effective, and just policy. 

At the last meeting, we passed several policy orders related to the recent disturbing gun violence. We put off the policy order asking that trees be considered essential infrastructure – so that will be discussed at our next regular meeting, which is Sept. 13. The renaming of the Agassiz Neighborhood to the Baldwin Neighborhood was approved – I had asked for some more time before voting since some neighbors were surprised by the plan and had not been involved. I enthusiastically supported it – and am thrilled that we are celebrating a stellar woman role model. The two policy orders related to restitution/reparations were tabled, which means we are holding off on discussion in order to allow for more community input before we vote on them. The policy order I sponsored with Mayor Siddiqui, Vice Mayor Mallon, and Councillor Sobrinho-Wheeler on getting city staff (including school department staff) 100% vaccinated passed unanimously and I hope to get a report on that soon.

Upcoming hearings:

City Manager search hearing – Government operations committee – August 11th, 5:30pm: Following a committee hearing on the search process this week, the government ops committee will meet again to continue the discussion. I am pleased with the number of hearings we have held – four up to this point – since hiring a city manager is the single most important job of the council. And the process we undergo will determine the strength of the candidate we hire. I have been pushing for a few pieces of the search process that I believe are important: 

• That the entire council have a vote on the search decisions (only 5 members sit on the government ops committee) 

• That we ensure no internal candidate is elevated early on, as I have seen in previous searches how that can dissuade outside candidates from applying 

• That we are aggressive in disseminating the job opening and encouraging candidates from across the country to apply – this should not be a city manager search in just the Greater Boston area
   

Elimination of single and two-family zoning – NLTP and Housing committees – August 24th, 1:00pm: multiple zoning petitions written by citizens were introduced over the last year and neither moved forward. These petitions often get caught up in political battles (fraught with misinformation), and I decided to work with Councillor Sobrinho-Wheeler to hold a series of NLTP+Housing committees hearings to discuss pieces of each petition. One piece that we have heard a lot about has been the single- and two-family only zoning that exists in Cambridge. While Cambridge is not Minneapolis (zoned for 70% single-family only), there are good reasons to look closely at the exclusionary aspects of our zoning code. Personally, I believe that the most potential exists in our corridors and around our transit hubs. Mass Ave from Harvard to Central and Central to Kendall has a zoning envelope that can hold far more units than currently exist, and I want us to focus our energy there. For this upcoming hearing, I am also looking forward to discussing the merits of eliminating single- and two-family zoning.