A Central Square business improvement district won council approval with a pitch to be cleaner, more welcoming and lively and a stronger promoter of square arts and businesses – described as “place keeping over place making.”

A temporary tree protection ordinance passed the City Council on Monday by a 7-2 vote, freezing city permits for removal of mature trees on private land with replacement fees for healthy “significant” trees taken down without a permit. There are several exceptions.

Warnings of an environmental emergency failed to win over enough city councillors to enact a temporary moratorium on tree-cutting. Instead the idea was returned to committee for a hearing to be scheduled by the end of February, possibly back for a vote in April.

Though a complete moratorium on cutting down trees drew strong support among speakers at an Ordinance Committee hearing, City Council committee members voted for a permit for anyone planning to take down a “significant” tree.

Silence from city staff about a December water main break along Craigie Street drew shocked testimony from affected residents and city councillors at a council meeting Monday, with vice mayor Jan Devereux calling it “un-Cambridge-like.”

Plans for a “digital equity research initiative” failed to impress Monday, seen as a follow-up to the a Municipal Broadband Task Force that avoids answering whether the city should or could have municipal broadband.

The changes were debated and opposed to the end, by councillors and more than a half-dozen residents who showed up to say the concept was overly complicated, unnecessary without trying simpler fixes first and even made the intersection more dangerous.

Expectations of razor-thin margins for a November ballot question brought vows of assistance from city councillors Monday who want Cambridge to set an example on protecting the rights of transgender people – or rather, to continue to.

A plan to redesign Inman Square and improve its chaotic traffic patterns with new bike lanes, a daytime bus lane and its Vellucci Plaza broken into two was essentially voted in Monday by the City Council on a 7-2 vote.

A police task force put together after a series of gunfire incidents in The Port neighborhood cut reports of shots fired by 78 percent from its start June 19 to its disbanding Sept. 1, along with making 46 arrests and issuing more than 200 warnings for illegal behaviors.