Council Updates, Garden Street Re-Reversal, FY27 Budget, and More

City Budget
The City’s FY27 budget proposal and associated loan orders are on the agenda for Monday night. The full budget book will be published on Monday, but the makeup of the budget are the appropriations for various departments (operating budget) and the loan authorizations (capital budget) are outlined in the formal budget proposal. As Finance Committee co-chair for several terms now, I have worked with City staff to include more regular Finance Committee meetings throughout the year to give Council an opportunity to weigh in on important funding initiatives and long-term strategy. The impact of those strategic year-round meetings is clear in this budget, which grows only 4.1% in FY27 (6.9% tax levy increase). This is within City policies for restrained budget growth and new growth is primarily driven by increases in fixed costs like COLA adjustments for staff. One particular thing I am tracking as we continue these budget discussions are the impacts of the federal government and the national economy on our own local economy. Slowdowns in the building sector due to tariffs and the life-science sector due to cuts in federal investment especially have resulted in a further shift toward property taxes, which now fund 70% of the operating budget. We will need to continue to find ways to increase revenue to mitigate tax increases going forward. Historically, those revenues have come through building permit costs and new construction, so if new growth continues to decline, we will need to be more and more strategic about spending.

Garden Street
There is a policy order on the agenda sponsored by councillors Al-Zubi and Sobrinho-Wheeler asking City staff to stop their work on restoring Garden Street to a two-way car traffic street while utilizing bidirectional bike lanes on the south side of the street (like the Brattle Street bike lanes). This policy order was originally on the agenda for April 13 and was subject to a charter right, meaning discussion on the item was delayed until this Monday (April 27). The background on this policy order is that in 2025, the Council voted to approve a policy order requesting changes to the Garden Street street layout. More detail in this Cambridge Day piece from last April about why I thought those changes were important and necessary after many attempts at mitigating unintended circumstances. A key for me, as a supporter of a bike lane network, was that the plan includes safe two-way bike lanes.

After the last vote, concerns were raised from residents who were nervous about the lack of a delivery and loading zone access near Shepard Street. The staff had said that the need could not be accommodated. Since then, I worked with councillors Wilson and Toner along with City staff and Harvard University to see if there was a solution. And we found one! The plan is to rearrange a Bluebike station to make space for a loading zone on Garden Street. It is true that the loading zone is across the street from the only apartment building – but it is planned if the redesign happens. And  parking spots will be lost – the analysis provided by City staff is that there are sufficient spots within a block or two for the number of cars that park on Garden in that stretch.

Importantly, two way car travel with bidirectional bike lanes is safe. We have a bidirectional bike lane on Brattle, which works well. By keeping bike lanes all on one side of the street, we reduce the number of intersection impacts. More cars traveling on Garden Street turn from and onto streets on the north side including Linnean, Shepard, and Chauncy than do on the south onto Bond and Madison, creating fewer opportunities for dangerous car and bike interactions. By moving the bike lanes to the south side of the street we reduce the number of intersection crossings for bikes from about 7 on the north side and about 5 on the south side to 5 intersections on the south side only.

Quick-build bike lanes have been a key strategy of the Cycling Safety Ordinance, not only because of the cost savings and the speed in which implementation can occur but also because it allows for additional changes if appropriate. We need to be willing to revisit projects and make adjustments at times. Garden Street, with two-way car traffic, will not be the same as it was five years ago, since bike lanes remain. It will have more cars than now, and should also have slower speeds due to narrow lanes. Two way traffic compared to one way generally sees slightly lower speeds, due to the two way, and narrower lanes.  The road will be safe for cyclists and pedestrians and there will be two-way bicycle travel in dedicated, protected bike lanes.

If we want a full network of accessible and safe bike lanes, which I absolutely do, per Policy Order POR 2024 #152 from December 2024, we need to be amenable to a variety of solutions. We will not get there if we don’t consider the option of bidirectional bike lanes when appropriate. Many existing roadways are too narrow to accommodate all the necessary uses otherwise. And we will not get to a comprehensive network by ignoring the very real traffic concerns in the area or by walling ourselves off to alternative street designs. I am disappointed to be discussing this issue again, and after a year, I still believe the two-way traffic and bi-directional bike lane is best for the entire area.

Cambridge Preschool Program Planning
The City Manager delivered a response to my policy order asking to begin a process of assessing the Cambridge Preschool Program (CPP) and working to expand reach over time. This is a large undertaking, as was the current iteration of universal Pre-K (UPK), and will take months of policy discussion with parents, providers, City staff, subject experts, and the Council. This report is the first step in that process and indicates City staff have begun to partner with the Harvard Kennedy School and a working group to do a landscape analysis of childcare and early education needs and develop policy recommendations based on this analysis.