School Committee member Richard Harding asks Cambridge school officials about the proposed budget at a Tuesday hearing. (Photo: Liv Rachelle Gold)

Amigos, Ola and now the Cambridge School Volunteers. Whether the threat is the creation of a middle school or budget cuts, each group has felt the need to come forward at a School Committee meeting to plead to continue their mission.

There will be a middle school, but the Spanish-language program Amigos is likely to stay K-8. There will be budget cuts, but the Portuguese-language program Ola was taken off the table.

At a Tuesday budget hearing with the committee and Superintendent Jeffrey Young, though, the volunteers organization found less reassurance, and the doubts that emerged over keeping it whole — coming up hard against a budgetary wall and the realization not everything can be saved — were reflected in the questions of committee members and testimony of officials.

Replying to worried questions about layoffs from Mayor David Maher, who lead the committee as well as well as the City Council, the superintendent went further than in last week’s rollout of the budget in discussing jobs that will be cut.

“In the aides category, the paraprofessionals, most of those could be handled by attrition. There are other areas where there are reductions, both within RSTA, for example, as well as in the administrative reorganization which is still taking shape, where there is a potential for individuals to lose jobs,” Young said, using an acronym for the technical high school program, the Rindge School of Technical Arts. “Our aim always is to try to do it through attrition to the greatest extent possible.”

“Having said that, we also have begun and will continue to try to help any individual whose position might be at risk to support them through any kind of transition and to make what is never a good situation have the least possible adverse impact,” he said.

Maher stressed that he hoped to affect the least number of people.

That might come down to about a dozen, said Claire Spinner, the district’s chief financial officer, who expanded Wednesday on Young’s answer. That’s an administrator, teacher and technical assistant at RSTA who know their jobs are being eliminated; one or two from among operations people such as custodians, with other losses being handled through an existing vacancy and retirements; and eight from district offices where “there may be some retirements we don’t know about yet, but not enough” to prevent actual layoffs.

As Young suggested, reduction to one hour of aide time per 13 students instead of nine over a school day might result in no layoffs, considering the amount of changeover in aides each year. “We don’t anticipate many if any” layoffs among aides, Spinner said.

Level means a drop for partnerships

The Cambridge School Volunteers home page at csvinc.org.

The Cambridge School Volunteers situation is more complicated.

In the district budget, they are being level-funded, Young said, meaning “there have been no cuts. Any time something is level-funded, of course, to be fair, just because of inflationary pressures usually some reductions have to be made. But the budget has not been cut. That was an intentional judgment.”

“The choice we made was, we’re going to put our funds into the classroom, into the schools. We’re certainly not going to do it on the backs of these very, very important partners and others we’ve mentioned, certainly,” he said, referring to the CitySprouts gardening project and Breakthrough Cambridge, an academic support program that features student-to-student learning. “But we didn’t feel this was the year economically to make a significant, incremental allocation to them.”

The district has $137.5 million for fiscal year 2011 — a 2.9 increase over the current year that, because of inflationary pressures to which Young referred, still leaves the district in the red. All told, and with the introduction of teaching-coaching and anti-bullying initiatives, the district must cut $4.7 million. (Saving Ola cost $55,000.)

But the three programs listed by Young are not school programs, but partnerships. The district is giving $100,000 to the Cambridge School Volunteers, a nine-staff nonprofit that places 900 volunteers annually throughout the district to provide more than 45,000 donated hours of tutoring. But the district’s contribution is less than half the program’s annual budget and already a decrease from last year, and another $45,000 in corporate and foundation grants will be lost this year, according to estimates announced Tuesday by Sondra Peskoe, the program’s vice president.

“We have reduced expenses through a 10 percent reduction in staff salaries, without a commensurate reduction in hours worked, and a 20 percent reduction in other expenses by deciding not to replace a departing employee for the time being,” Peskoe said during the hourlong public comment period.

“We already operate on a limited budget. Cutting costs further cannot be achieved without a reductions we provide to the CPSD,” Peskoe said, referring to the city’s public schools district. Then:

“We understand these are tough economic times. However, we also appreciate that the School Committee and the superintendent recognize successful education programs that achieve CPSD’s goals and objectives and want to preserve these programs and organizations. We are asking you to join with us in our efforts to fund continuation of our valuable contributions and help CPSD students achieve academic success.”

Her statement was followed by those of volunteers — Alison Stewart, a Harvard doctoral student who has donated her time for four years, an emblem of the link with academia idealized by many in the city, and rejected offers to tutor for pay in favor of her experiences in the district; Ruth Goodman, a project consultant at Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the New England Journal of Medicine who has coached a student for five years and seen a problem reader become an avid consumer of poetry, biography, science and fiction.

School Committee member Alice Turkel was among those Tuesday hoping to find more funding for the Cambridge School Volunteers. (Photo: Liv Rachelle Gold)

The testimony seemed effective. Responding to a comment by Maher about whether federal stimulus funds for mentoring could be applied to tutoring, committee member Alice Turkel asked him to apply his mayoral powers to find funds for the volunteers.

“I’ll help write the letter to build up that case,” she said, but Maher didn’t want to raise hopes on a long shot.

Other questions

There were other budget questions and concerns from audience members, including a constructive proposal for more science funding from Dan Monahan, speaking as a science teacher although he is also vice president of the Cambridge Teachers Association; critiques from city councillor candidates Lawrence Adkins and Charles Marquardt — the latter is an economist and accountant — over the lack of specifics on closing the achievement gap; and questions from councillor and Baldwin School parent Craig Kelley on how to keep people from leaving the district because “their kids can’t learn. The classrooms are just too disruptive.” He too sought more answers from Young. (There was also a parent who wondered about the transition of special-needs children from kindergarten classes with teachers’ aides to first-grade classrooms with only a teacher; instructional aides to special education are not being cut, Spinner said.)

Committee members did, too, raising issues such as the lack of data on high school class sizes, the decentralized nature of budgeting in the past and whether such things as before-school basketball could truly be considered to be contributing to student achievement. They also asked about plans to fold the Transition Program into the High School Extension Program; the Transition Program educates students younger than 16 who are troubled in some way and can’t be in the high school itself, and has served as few as six students over the course of the year. A merger would mean the district could cut another 1.45 full-time equivalent positions, Spinner said.

Young asked committee members to alert him to any other questions so he could arrive with the proper research to the next meeting — March 23, which is to serve as a more general question-and-answer period about the 2011 budget.

The committee votes on the budget April 6.

Dear Senate President Murray, Senators Petruccelli and Tolman:

I am writing in support of Senate Bill 2283, the anti-bullying legislation. I am a licensed independent clinical social worker with more than 15 years of experience working with special needs children and their families. I am also serving my third term on the Cambridge School Committee and I am the current vice chairman. Through both of these positions, as well as being a parent of two boys, I have had a great deal of professional and personal experience with bullying. I have seen firsthand the devastating effects to both the bully and bullied. I have seen children terrified to attend school, fall into depression, their grades and social interactions forever impacted. The bullying of today is far more intense and prevalent than ever before.

What impresses me about this bill is the efforts made in the area of prevention. I applaud state Rep. Marty Walz for her leadership in ensuring that a bill was crafted that looked at the root of the issue. I know the first reaction when we hear the horror stories or learn about a young person taking their life after being bullied is to focus on punishment and consequences for the bully. The truth is, however, suspending a child for bullying without any other intervention will not solve this problem. We must look at the psychological impact and reasoning behind those who bully and those who are bullied. We must ensure that along with our academic subjects we are teaching our children how to be emotionally healthy, how to be supportive members of the community and how to help when they see an injustice taking place.

These types of interventions are not about having signs on walls that say, “no bullying” or simply creating a policy in a handbook that is put on a shelf. This is about changing the way we look at our school communities. This is about creating an atmosphere that is nurturing, emotionally healthy and safe for all children, regardless of race, class, learning style or sexual orientation. You as legislators have the ability to not only pass legislation that is well thought through but also to fund such legislation to ensure schools have the time, training and programs needed to develop emotionally strong children. In a culture that seems more concerned with standardized testing and attacking public schools, we must realize that teaching our students to be problem solvers, to be positive community members, to treat others with respect and dignity, is as important to their future as scoring well on the MCAS.

I will also say that these programs need to start early and include parents. This bill calls for parent involvement. Schools need to value this involvement. Schools need to provide educational opportunities for parents so that they can learn how to help their children. This is particularly true with cyberbullying, as parenting skills have not caught up with advancements in technology. This is a frontier for parents, and they must be part of any process if we are going to overcome this epidemic.

Thank you for your time and I hope you and others support this legislation.

Respectfully,

Marc McGovern Cambridge

Buses speed along Massachusetts Avenue near Central Square. There have been complaints drivers have ignored red lights — and videos posted by wbztv.com showing them doing it. (Photo: Marc Levy)

Buses running red lights and meeting space going unused in the Cambridge Main Library caught city councillors’ attention Monday, and on each the city manager was asked to report back on when and how the situations could be addressed head-on.

In the matter of the buses, that’s poor phrasing. Leland Cheung wrote in his policy order of recent unsafe, “aggressive and inconsiderate driving” by Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority employees and said Monday that he was “shocked to see video of MBTA buses run the red lights by Lechmere” posted by wbztv.com.

“It’s an all-too common experience to either be on a bus or to see a bus go through a red light,” he said. “It’s just unacceptable. I appreciate the MBTA, but they need to obey the rules of the road.”

Because pulling over a bus that has broken a traffic law would delay and punish the bus’ riders and not just the driver, City Manager Robert W. Healy Jr. and his staff was to speak with officials at the authority and find a way for traffic-enforcement officers to ticket a driver without a stop.

Lydia Rivera, a spokeswoman with the authority, did not return a message left Monday.

Meeting space at the Cambridge Main Library is going unused by citizens because of repeated delays in usage policies, residents, city councillors and librarians said this week. (Photo: Marc Levy)

A half-dozen residents came forward during public comment with concerns about the library — that too many people were driving to it and parking on the street, rather than in the library’s underground parking garage, resulting in fewer spaces for residents; that funding should be found for more hours at the Main Library and branch libraries alike; and that, indeed, policies for using Main Library meeting spaces were elusive at best and had been since the building was opened to the public in November.

“I’ve been inquiring as to whether any citizen or nonprofit organizations can use the meeting rooms, and I was originally told, ‘No, we don’t have a policy, come back in January.’ I came back in January and was told come back in March,” said Mark Jacquith, a member of the East Cambridge Planning Team and Association of Cambridge Neighborhoods. “When I came back in March, they said a policy would be ready the first of July. It seems they’re not really working on a policy.”

Minka vanBeuzekom, a resident of Central Square and once and future candidate for City Council, said she’d found the library gets up to a dozen calls per day for use of the rooms that, because of a lack of library policy, can’t be fulfilled. That leaves a disappointed citizenry that “so obviously needs and deserves to get that done.”

Plans for the $90 million library renovation added at least three meeting rooms for some 4,500 square feet. So far they have been used for library functions, but not for citizen-planned meetings, and a librarian confirmed Tuesday afternoon that staff could not schedule the rooms for use. Library officials are working on the meeting room policies, the librarian said.

Councillor Ken Reeves said he’d encountered the problem as part of a group that wanted to use a 200-seat hall in the library, which was, when proposed, “intended [to have] a great deal of public use.”

Director of Libraries Susan M. Flannery told him that “for the first couple of months, the library wanted to do the programming,” Reeves recalled. “We can’t keep moving the date.”

Craig Kelley, the councillor who brought forward the library issue Monday, also noted that it’s location by Cambridge Rindge & Latin School, the city’s high school, was “promoted as a reason to build such an elaborate addition,” but the influx of students during the day has been “problematic,” and students complain they’ve been forced to sign waivers if they want to be in the library after school.

Kelley asked the city manager to look into how the library plans to work with the students and, finally, what’s to become of unused café space that was to be staffed by students from the Rindge School of Technical Arts. (The school’s executive director, Michael V. Ananis, offered a correction Tuesday: Students will bake cookies at cost, when they can, that will be sold at the cafe by Friends of the Library volunteers. That is still set to happen this spring, slowed by students’ schedules and the need to label baked goods correctly — a need pointed out by a volunteer who is also on the city’s health board.)

Flannery was out of the office and not available for comment Tuesday.

There were hints of a resolution Monday to the long-empty 450 Massachusetts Ave. storefront owned by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. (Photo: Marc Levy)

The decline of Central Square drew debate from city councillors at their Monday meeting. While asking the city manager to gather the Central Square community to decide a path forward, they split on whether it was their role to come up with a revival plan or request one from the city manager and Community Development department.

Also debated: how active a role the city can have in getting empty storefronts filled.

There was strong agreement that, as councillor Ken Reeves said, “we have opened the door of unreality to have citizens believe we can tell people what they must do with property they own.”

But Reeves also said he’d sent many prospective tenants to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, whose prominently empty storefront next to the Central Square Theater has drawn repeated criticism from officials and residents.

And Beth Rubenstein, the assistant city manager heading Community Development, revealed that she’d approached the TJX Cos. Inc. about moving into the square without success, but would try again now that nearly 21,000 square feet has become vacant since the early February departure of Pearl Art from 579 Massachusetts Ave.

Several councilors learned Monday that Pearl’s store was profitable and closed as part of a larger corporate strategy, but that still left empty windows on Massachusetts Avenue in a vital Cambridge marketplace. The closing doubled the amount of available space in the square, according to a city database, and councillors including Henrietta Davis suggested short-term programs to fill display windows, such as filling storefronts with art or municipal information, could help keep the square from looking too desolate.

A T.J. Maxx or Marshall’s can fit in 20,000 square feet, Rubenstein confirmed, promising to again approach the Framingham company. It was noted that such stores in Boston have even less parking than the Cambridge location would offer.

“I would love to have one of those entities in Central Square,” said City Manager Robert W. Healy Jr. “But I’m not going to sit here and say it’ll succeed, because those are corporate decisions.”

Demand for department-style retail, with apparel and especially women’s apparel, was at the top of a Central Square wish list created as part of 400-person survey last year, councillor Denise Simmons noted.

“Part of the problem is that we don’t have a set economic development plan,” she told Rubenstein and Healy. “I’m sure the business owners would like the city to be more deliberate, to go beyond a façade program. We have a wonderful Community Development department, we’re not in short supply of [stakeholders], so why such difficulty coming together?”

She also hoped the Central Square Business Association would step forward more aggressively, as she said she’s seen such associations do in Harvard or Kendall squares.

“We’ve been waiting for Central Square to come into its own,” said Simmons, who organized discussion on the square last year, when she was mayor. “How do we breathe some real air into it?”

Before Simmons insisted on Healy and Rubenstein leading the process, councillors Craig Kelley and Leland Cheung said they wanted the council to be more active, instead bringing suggestions to city workers. But all councillors who spoke agreed residents should be involved, and that the work should be done in a private-public partnership.

Some property owners find a tax benefit in leaving their storefronts empty, Healy said. And while there “might be a slight disjoint” between what renters feel they should pay and what landlords feel they can charge, Healy is aware of organizations forced out by higher rents who want to find other space in the square — likely a reference to Cambridge Community Television, which is within the last six months of its tenancy on Prospect Street. That appeal keeps property owners from feeling too desperate to rent at lower rates, he suggested.

Healy said he was willing to meet on the topic of Central Square improvements, and he was even able to offer some hope on MIT’s long-vacant space at 450 Massachusetts Ave.

“I do think MIT is making some level of progress on its property by the theater,” he said.

He wants something similar for Cambridge, and he cites an independent study saying Kendall Square should host it. “It could even benefit Central Square,” Reeves said.

So according to this study, a Kendall Square music festival could benefit Central Square, where Cambridge keeps its music clubs?

It’s reminiscent of the suggestion made Saturday at a climate congress for “meatless Mondays,” although Catholics already have meatless Fridays.

These things may just come naturally to the city that once went through 1,396 ballots to elect a mayor.

Nicholson

Cambridge will annex Somerville’s Davis Square and Somerville gets East Cambridge in return, according to a plan laid out Sunday on “The Cambridge Rag,” a Cambridge Community Television show hosted by Roger Nicholson.

Nicholson was talking about his intentions to run for City Council and reap a $70,000 salary, but could not describe his platform. At the same time, he noted the amount of time his guest — me, the editor of Cambridge Day — spends in Diesel, the Davis Square coffee shop, and complained that the offices of the Cambridge Chronicle were also in Davis Square, rather than having a Cambridge address. (For the record, Cambridge Day is in Cambridge, near Porter Square.)

On a suggestion Cambridge could incorporate Davis Square, which is the MBTA red line’s only stop outside Cambridge above the Charles River, Nicholson was off and running, delivering an extemporaneous rant about winning not just Diesel, but The Somerville Theatre (to be renamed The Cambridge Theatre), the Burren and other cultural hot spots. At the same time, he suggested residents of East Cambridge would be happy to be reunited with their soul mates in Somerville.

“East Somerville has ruined Somerville and East Cambridge has ruined Cambridge,” said Nicholson, a resident of East Cambridge.

His plans are sketchy at best. He hopes to hang on to the CambridgeSide Galleria but agrees that the Lechmere MBTA station, Cambridge’s only green line stop, would go to Somerville. Cambridge would also lose several signature restaurants, such as Portugalia and the East Side Bar & Grille, although Nicholson plans to hang onto and possibly expand Inman Square.

A message was left Sunday with Joseph Curtatone, the mayor of Somerville, to warn him of Nicholson’s possibly armed incursion.

People found Sunday night in a deserted Davis Square seemed intrigued by the idea, once they thought about it (and ignored the impossibility).

“Davis Square is expensive enough without being part of Cambridge officially,” said Ana K., a server at Redbones Barbecue who has lived most of her life in the square. “People say it all the time, anyway, that Davis Square is part of Cambridge.”

Micala S., a Cambridge native found studying at the square’s Starbucks (and another person who didn’t want to give a full name) rejected the idea at first, but realized an upside for an area where she regularly spends time.

“Maybe it should switch to Cambridge. I wouldn’t have to find parking every morning — I could park with my Cambridge permit,” she said.

Nicholson said he would return to his plan on future shows, possibly revealing his proposed city borders — and whether he would try to claim Allston and Boston land bought by Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — in a week. The show runs at 8 p.m. Sundays on local cable Channel 9.

Fuller

A panel presentation of Cambridge women activists past and present — starting with Transcendentalist and suffragist Margaret Fuller — is scheduled as part of an International Women’s Day celebration at 6 p.m. Monday at the City Hall Annex, 344 Broadway, Cambridge. (Light refreshments are served at 5:30 p.m.)

Fuller, born in 1810 in Cambridgeport, was praised by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton as having a tremendous influence on U.S. women. But that’s too limiting: She was also a prodigy and the equal or master of fellow Transcendentalists such as Ralph Waldo Emerson. She was an author, educator, historian and editor of The Dial, the movement’s journal. Later she may or (scandalously) may not have been married to an Italian nobleman; they and their child died in passage back to America. A monument to her stands in Mount Auburn Cemetery.

Brief academic biographies of Fuller are here and here.

Panel speakers include Joan von Mehren, Bishnu Pariyar and Patricia Montes.

This free program is sponsored by the Cambridge Women’s Heritage Project. For information, call Sarah Burks at (617) 349-4687 or click here.

Marian Darlington-Hope

Cambridge Day had the chance to speak last week with Marian Darlington-Hope, a member of the Cambridge Review Committee — the 12-member panel known informally as the “Gates committee.” It was formed after the internationally discussed July 16 arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. by white police Sgt. James Crowley, at Gates’ home, on charges of disorderly conduct. The charges were dropped.

Darlington-Hope is a professor at Lesley University, city human services commissioner, and member of the Area 4 Coalition and of the Margaret Fuller House Neighborhood Board. She was kind enough to talk at length; some of what she said was used in an earlier article, and those comments are not repeated here. Also, her responses and the interviewer’s questions were cleaned up minimally. In general the structure and casual language of the interview have been kept intact to help ensure the transcription doesn’t change the meaning or context of a reply.

Unfortunately, that makes for a somewhat long post, albeit one with much of interest to be gleaned from it.

Occasionally “[unintelligible]” will appear in the text when a word or two could not be deciphered from a digital audio recording of the Wednesday interview. (Permission to record was granted by Darlington-Hope.) The interview starts with a question from Cambridge Day:

The committee has been instructed to look beyond the Gates incident, but I’m not sure how you look beyond the Gates incident without first looking at the Gates incident. Am I correct in thinking that —

Uh, sure. We heard the original tapes, read all the documents, so we did do all that kind of work up front. The reporting that was done, all of it. Then later, we did meet with Sgt. Crowley, though the conversation was not about his interpretation or his view of what happened. That was sort of the understanding, because we weren’t trying to find who was at fault; that wasn’t the focus of this. We were really just trying to have an understanding, a general understanding that we were all on the same page about the incident and that what we [unintelligible] to look at where do we need to go from here?

So you did not ask Sgt. Crowley what happened July 16.

No, we didn’t. For a couple of reasons. One, I think we really want to understand what [unintelligible] meant for him, and what we’re interested in is his sort of sense of policing in Cambridge, because we are so diverse. We didn’t want to get caught up in his story and then professor Gates’ story and then decide which story was the better — we didn’t want to do that.

Then why talk to Sgt. Crowley specifically?

Well, he was the one who was involved in the incident. We want to get his perception of the challenges around policing in a diverse community like Cambridge. So that’s we don’t ask specifically what happened, but obviously it had an impact and we wanted to get his sense of what it means to police in Cambridge, some of the dynamics of race, class, all that.

I guess I’m just confused because, barring the July 16 incident that sparked the need for the committee, it seems as though any police officer in Cambridge would have as much to say on that topic.

Yes, but he was one that was very specifically involved in one. And so we wanted to have him — and he didn’t even have to come. We wanted to give him an opportunity to address the committee and to get his take on policing in Cambridge. That’s what we did.

Well, that pretty much gets to a central conflict —

And we’re planning to have a conversation also with professor Gates. We’re trying to work out a schedule, because we imagine he’s quite busy.

What will you ask professor Gates about?

Well, we’ll ask him whatever he wants to tell us. We wanted to give him an opportunity, the same opportunity we gave Sgt. Crowley to talk to the committee. I mean, I know that he is concerned with issues of race and class. We want to hear what he has to say about that. Or anything he would like to share with the committee. We really want to give folks an opportunity to talk to us.

Will you ask professor Gates about the July 16 incident?

No. No we’re not.

What if he wants to talk to you about the July 16 incident?

Obviously if he wanted to, we wouldn’t say, “No, you can’t talk to us,” but our intention is not to ask him about that incident.

Was this approach determined by the committee members?

Yeah, actually, and maybe early on there were probably things that hadn’t been, that weren’t yet resolved, but I think early on — we didn’t want to do anything that would interfere with the Police Review and Advisory Board’s potential review. So we didn’t want to start doing the work they might be doing, because that’s what the Police Review and Advisory Board is, that’s their sort of mandate — they review complaints against the police. So we didn’t want to get involved in doing their work.

Even though they hadn’t announced there would be an investigation at that point?

Well, they didn’t have a director at that point.

So did you and the other members of the committee expect PRAB to start an investigation once there was a director?

We knew there would be an opportunity to do that once there was a director. But we didn’t want to put ourselves in a position of beginning to look like we were trying to do the work of PRAB, because it was really important to the committee that they get a new executive director. So we wanted to be clear that we wouldn’t take over their mandate and then that would push us into trying to figure out who was responsible, who was at fault, and we really didn’t want to do that.

So what were your instructions from — from who did you get your operating directive? Was it City Manager Robert W. Healy Jr. or [Police] Commissioner Robert Haas?

No, actually it was the commissioner. He invited us to participate and he laid out the things that were important in terms of going forward, how it might benefit the city.

What was his sort of sales pitch? And how did he describe the mission once people had actually gotten on board?

I think he fundamentally believed that we might be able to as a group give recommendations to the city. That’s why you have sort of a whole range of people on the committee, with all kinds of backgrounds, law, police … that as a group we would really be able to make some recommendations to the city about going forward.

What did he say about the July 16 incident itself?

Well, I’m trying to remember when we spoke to him for the first time — said that it was probably one of the most challenging experiences he had, that it was difficult, that it was hard on the police department period — you know, everyone wanted to camp out in the city. That it was difficult for the entire police department for the city to be in this kind of spotlight.

What did he say about the commission’s mission in regard to the July 16 incident is more along the lines of what I was wondering?

That he wanted us to actually look at what kind of recommendations to focus on where we might go with the incident and for Cambridge to be a — give Cambridge an opportunity to be a place where we can learn a lot from this incident and make recommendations that can take us forward.

When was your first meeting?

October.

Okay, so you said the committee decided itself that it would not conduct an investigation into the July 16 incident …

Right.

Okay, but the announcement —

I don’t think the commissioner — I don’t think when he laid it out, he — I’m sort of going to think about this, because I’m not sure he said “You’re not allowed to,” I don’t remember those words being used, but I think from the very beginning, when the mission was laid out for us, that doing an investigation was not listed as being the priority, as being an objective. It was really for us to sort of use the incident as a place to let us, to help us, go forward, but not as a place for an investigation. And I think among the members, we certainly looked at it, but there wasn’t a desire on our part to investigate it in a way that would then direct us toward a resolution about who’s at fault. Or whether or not the arrest was warranted, or any of that. It was an emerging understanding that these things happen, we want to keep them from happening, so what might we do as a city in terms of police training, in terms of the work of the city, the organizations — we have a number of organizations that pay attention to human rights and PRAB, so that’s why we sort of took the direction that we did — and that means we could make recommendations both about the police but also about what the city might do, given its resources, to foster better communication between police, foster better communication among citizens, the police and City Council, all.

You’re saying the committee decided in October not to do a specific investigation of the July 16 incident, although you were —

In order to simply even understand what happened, because by the time we got to it people had heard different things about what actually happened, so we got together, together we listened to the tapes, together we read the reports, together we learned about what happened both before the arrest, at the arrest, after the arrest and then from there we moved on.

In asking you to be on the committee, did Commissioner Haas say if the committee wanted to pass judgment on the July 16 incident it would be allowed to?

No, he didn’t say anything like that at all, either way. Either way he didn’t say anything. In fact —

When you were convinced to be part of the committee, did it pass through your mind that you might want to do that?

No. First of all, because there is PRAB, and that’s what they do. And so why would we be doing that if the PRAB were to pick that up?

I’m confused by the fact that all the way back on July 27, City Manager Robert Healy said there would be this committee —

Right. But he didn’t say we would be doing an investigation.

No, he specifically said you would not be.

Right.

But you said you decided as a commission in October that you would not be.

Well, we didn’t meet as a whole body until October. By the time there’s we were probably being selected and being talked to, up until, yeah, I guess the first meeting was in October, early October. And as we were beginning to [unintelligible] well, we need to begin to think about what happened, to take a — so we were all in the same place, I think people were really, really clear, “Well, what is the value, we need to be clear on what the value is. We’re not going to be doing an investigation, that’s a different committee!”

But how did Robert Healy know you weren’t going to be looking at the July 16 incident if you didn’t decide it until October? I mean, that’s several months’ difference.

Well, yeah, it’s clear to me he probably decided we weren’t going to be doing it before we met. But when we met, I mean, there was never a conversation that we would, we would even, might do that. I hear what you’re saying. I think it was clear it wasn’t the intent for us to do that. We weren’t hired — hired! None of us were hired — we weren’t asked to do that when we were brought on. It wasn’t listed out as one of the objectives of the committee, and so —

So how did the committee decide not to, so many months after it had already been announced you wouldn’t be? Was there a vote?

Oh no, there wasn’t a vote. Let me give you an example. At our first meeting, as we were beginning to listen to the tape and you’re having discussions on what happened here and what happened there, and I don’t remember which committee member saying, “Well, we’re not doing an investigation. We really want to do is listen to this and have a good understanding of it.” It’s really easy to get caught into thinking about delving deeper, but that really wasn’t our understanding or our agreement to do that.

As a committee, as a committee member —

There was no vote, that was the understanding: We were not going to be doing that. No one raised it as, “Well, maybe we should do that.” That didn’t get raised by anyone. Chuck Wexler, who is the chair of the committee, in our conversation, talked about what we might do, how we might be able to help, but there was never a conversation or understanding about doing an investigation.

Do you know where the investigation into the July 16 incident is?

What I understand is that PRAB is launching an investigation, or proposing launching an investigation. I don’t know exactly the processes of doing it from PRAB’s end, what the processes are, but that’s my understanding.

What about an internal affairs investigation?

I don’t know. We haven’t even talked about that at our committee.

Does the committee that feel it’s important — and of course I understand I’m asking you to summarize the collective wisdom gleaned from conversation you’ve had within the committee — for a specific incident to be investigated? And I’m talking ever.

That I can’t answer. I can’t answer.

Well, the goal of the committee is to say, if an incident such as this occurs, how should it be handled? Am I summarizing correctly?

It was broader than that. Certainly part of it is how do you keep something like this from happening is one. What are the conditions that foster this, that foster incidents like this from happening. So it wasn’t simply, should it should not be — there’s a structure for that to happen. But are there some things we can learn for both the police and the city so that when we reduce the likelihood that it is going to happen that it may get handled differently. But not that sort of generalization that they should or should not be investigated.

I’m sorry, say that again? If there’s an incident between a police officer and a citizen, and it in this case it happened very publicly, is there a value in determining where fault lies?

Should there ever be an investigation to figure that out?

That’s one way to phrase it, yes.

There are mechanisms for doing that. There are internal investigations that can do that, we have PRAB that comes from citizens to be able to do that work. I don’t think our view is that there shouldn’t be an investigation when there’s an incident between the police and citizens, that there shouldn’t be an investigation. That wasn’t our goal.

Should there definitely be a Professional Standards investigation to determine if there was some unfairness?

I can’t speak for the committee for that, but I personally would expect that would happen.

Does it surprise you that there is none?

I’m not convinced there isn’t any.

There is none. I spoke with the person who heads Professional Standards a couple of weeks ago. There’s no investigation.

Right, but that’s a different question. If there isn’t an investigation is different from asking if there ever should be an investigation.

Well, how quickly do you feel an investigation should take place? Is there value to it taking place within, oh, I don’t know, six months of an incident itself?

So in terms of the Gates case, whether or not there should be an investigation? That sounds like that’s what you’re asking.

And I thought I heard you say yes.

I’m not sure I’m saying yes that there should be one in the Gates case. Wasn’t one being done — I really have not focused on the other processes which are potentially available for the police to engage in. But what I do know is that there’s not [unintelligible] one. I know that [unintelligible] answers your question the way you’d like to, but …

It seems like it’d be impossible to read the police report, listen to the tapes and not, well …

Not have an opinion?

It seems like it’d be difficult to not have an opinion.

Oh, yeah, I’m sure people have opinions. But what we’ve worked at, what we’ve worked on is what do we do about this, what do we recommend, so these things both don’t happen again or happen very few and far between, and can the city learn from it so that it can cultivate [unintelligible] policies at the city level, function that the city might take. Because it is a city where people are surprised it happened in many ways. I think they’ve been taken aback that it happened, not that people don’t get arrested or stopped by the police unfairly, it happens everywhere. But I do think that it’s taken us aback in  — how do we deal with this? Because I think it brought up old feelings, even if it hasn’t happened in a long time, it brought up lots of feelings about police behavior in the community. I mean, people are obviously going to have a lot of views on this.

I would suggest it brought up current feelings.

Yeah, current feelings. Current feelings as well.

You’re aware that people of color in Cambridge have many, many stories to tell of police stops for no particular reason, stops that seem to be inspired by their color.

Yes.

How do you characterize Cambridge’s race relations at the moment? Do you feel there’s a problem?

Race relations? I don’t think they’re a problem for Cambridge. I do think there are some problems that are much more a function of class and race. [Darlington-Hope may have said “more a function of class than race.”]

Have you heard many stories of people being stopped for, well —

Well, sure, you go to community meetings and even a couple public meetings and people tell you about being 13 and in 1968 they were arrested for vagrancy. But, and that — clearly if you’re in your late 50s, that’s a defining moment for you.

How about right now in 2010 in Cambridge?

What about 2010 in Cambridge? I think we have less than that now, but there were at least three that I heard in my attending some of the neighborhood meetings. People not arrested, but just stopped —

I’m surprised, because —

— and questioning whether it was because I’m a person of color. That’s often a question for people when you get stopped by police —

Because I’d heard —

— if you’re a person of color, and I understand that.

I’ve been talking to people and haven’t been hearing historical stories, I’ve heard been hearing stories about right now.

I haven’t heard that. I haven’t heard, I mean, I’ve heard probably three as I say in the past few months since I have attended meetings. Most recently I read about one with Bishop [Filipe C.] Teixeira, just a couple weeks ago, a week ago, he was stopped by police.

Yeah, that was one of them, and before that, the Rev. [Irene] Munroe and Imam Firman … it seems like, you know, talk to a black person and you’ll find a story about being stopped by police for reasons they don’t understand.

Mm-hm.

So my question, leading up to this is, do you feel it’s important for police to address this, this specific issue of who they stop and why, for the sake of the community?

Meaning if a person of color is stopped by a police officer who’s white, that the community should know whether that particular police officer, why that person was stopped in some sort of public way?

If people of color are saying this is happening all the time, they may feel it’s important that the public address that specifically, and I’m guessing the committee might be heading in that direction as well. But if the committee is not hearing these contemporary stories of police stops —

Well, we’ve heard some, obviously. We haven’t heard a lot of them, but we’ve heard some.  We’ve had members of the community come to meet with us when we’ve met together. We’ve not just had people of color, but just a number of different citizens come and talk about their experiences with the police. Some of them are young African-American men, some were older women of color, some were white middle-age people, we’ve had a number of people who’ve come to talk about their experience with police. Sometimes they had experiences themselves, or experiences they heard about.

Let me just sum this up. My suspicion is that it’ll be exasperating or is exasperating to people of color if they perceive that an incident like this happens, happens all the time, happens July 16 right out in the public eye and there’s no accounting for it. There’s no internal affairs investigation and Police Review and Advisory Board expresses they seem to be stymied because neither Crowley nor Gates will talk to them, so, put very bluntly, there seems to be no action toward accountability and therefore no resolution for this specific, very public incident. In the committee’s view, again I’m asking you to express an opinion based on conversations you’ve had with the whole committee, what is the effect of that on the community?

To be honest, we haven’t had a conversation as you described it. I don’t think we have come — we have — we’ve heard that these are experiences that go on — that’s not what we’ve heard as we’ve gone to the public meetings and neighborhood meetings, we’re not going to say that they don’t happen at all, but that is not what we’re hearing.

Okay. Just having a conversation here, my feeling is that it is bad for something like this to happen so publicly and for there to be no accountability. Do you personally agree that without a resolution it really does — it could seem as though a white police officer got away with abusing his authority or it could seem this officer was unfairly castigated for merely doing his job. It seems to me some accountability would be actually beneficial. Am I off base?

No, I don’t think you’re off base, but I will say that was not the mandate of the committee. That wasn’t our mandate.

But as a member of the committee that is looking forward, taking a broad look at how exactly this incident, and policing and race in general should be approached, I’m thinking you have become pretty much of an expert on whether it is beneficial for a community to have some sort of accountability. Or is it in fact good for people to just walk away?

No, if they were going to walk away, we would have done that back in, they could have done that back in July. Right? It could have happened back in July.

Well, I don’t know. There’s no internal affairs investigation, PRAB seems stymied and your committee was specifically enjoined not to look at this specific incident.

If they had wanted to simply walk away they wouldn’t have bothered to have a committee to look at how we learn from this and go forward. They wouldn’t have bothered. The fact we even exist, I think, continues to raise …

But you’re not looking at the incident.

Because there is a place to be done, which is PRAB. And in fact at one of our meetings people were angry because they thought we were taking PRAB’s role.

So you feel that it’s important for PRAB to investigate?

If PRAB wants to take this on, they should. It’s within their purview. It’s not within the purview of —

That’s not what I’m asking. I’m asking you as an expert in this field, is it is important for PRAB to find some accountability?

Actually, I’m not sure. I’m really not sure.

[long silence]

Do you believe in the concept of legal justice?

Of course!

[long silence]

I’m just surprised. It seems like there are a lot of questions around this particular incident —

And there probably always will be. Folks that are looking to lay blame, find blame, will not be satisfied unless particularly this officer is blamed and found in the wrong. And then I’m not sure what that would get us. It certainly wouldn’t heal the situation. I do think those feelings would exist regardless of any findings. And I do think there needs to be some healing that takes place, but I’m not convinced that finding blame does that. I think what we know from the incident is that there is work that needs to be done, so residents feel safe and feel good about their engagement with the police and the police department, but I’m not convinced finding blame somehow gives them closure so that they can go on.

When you invite Sgt. Crowley and professor Gates to talk, is it with the understanding you will not ask about July 16?

What was our understanding of that? I think that was the general agreement.

I’m sorry, I need to try to pin you down there a little bit. In the specific invitations —

I don’t remember anyone saying, “No, you may not ask them any questions,” but there was clearly a sense, I think an agreement that, I feel like we’re often walking on this fine line between doing an investigation and not. And so asking about the incident or deciding to have a conversation about the incident, particularly if I’m not sure everything’s been resolved, that might make people feel, “Maybe I have to have my attorney.” No one’s said that, but if it starts being an investigation, people want to be careful. We’re much more interested in where we’re going to go from here.

You may know him from such historical horror mash-ups as “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies,” but he is also the author of “The Big Book of Porn” and “The Spider-Man Handbook.”

Tickets are $5 (and come with a $5 coupon) and may be available at the door of the Brattle, 40 Brattle St., the night of the reading, or you can try at The Coop, 1678 Massachusetts Ave. Or call (617) 499-2012.

Last year’s rezoning in Kendall Square, which adds density by building upward and freeing open space, was cited Saturday by Cambridge Mayor David Maher as an approach the city is taking toward being more environmentally conscious. (Photo: Kingdafy)

The city’s third and final climate congress was held Saturday, wrapping up its four-month span with votes to ask city government to organize and lead the fight to decrease greenhouse gas emissions in Cambridge, but leave room for citizen involvement.

Along with by-now standard argument about best approaches, there were three votes taken among the roughly 50 participants — down by about half from the December and January congresses. This final session was added at the end of the Jan. 23 session when participants felt their work wasn’t done.

Like previous sessions, Saturday’s congress was a mix of small working groups and discussion involving all participants, but this time the groups met at the end, after a vote on larger principles, to craft their next steps.

The most controversial vote, given that it was taken among people concerned enough about climate change to meet from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on a Saturday with the first truly pleasant weather of the year, was the final one, called A-3 or “Specific Recommendations for Response to Climate Emergency” (italics theirs).

It went 47-4, with two abstaining, on asking the city to do such things as designating a chief sustainability officer or sustainability manager to report to the city manager and creating a Climate Emergency Response Board to coordinate efforts citywide.

Mayor David Maher, who was at the session with councillors Henrietta Davis and Sam Seidel, seemed generally approving of the congress’ work, but said, “Coming from the ground up is the right way to have it happen. It can’t be a top-down thing … if it’s strictly a city effort, it’s not going to be a success.”

Although the city and council is already a strong green hue — municipal conservation efforts are under way and succeeding, new structures and renovations such as the Main Branch library are built to conserve energy, the council approved zoning changes for density in Kendall Square and recently adopted a “stretch code” for construction, and the schools superintendent is budgeting a self-funded position of “project manager of sustainable practices” — Maher expressed some caution about the ideas behind A-3.

“This needs to be well thought our prior to just creating city positions,” Maher said. “It may be there are many decentralized efforts going on right now and people are looking for a more coordinated effort. That’s how I’m looking at it.”

On the other hand, it’s the perfect time to create positions. The city is in the midst of crafting a budget, he noted.

The other votes taken were:

46-3 on A-1, a “civic climate emergency response” calling on citizens, organizations, businesses and institutions to work with city government to put climate protection actions and policies in place;

46-2 on A-2, a “city response to climate emergency” asking the City Council and administration to act on four priorities — establishing annual and long-term goals and a campaign and coalition to cut local greenhouse gas emissions, leading with cuts to its own greenhouse gas emissions, and “create a robust administrative and governance structure for mobilizing response to the climate emergency” — and report back.

They are summed up in this report.

In the 40-page document are many individual proposals, everything from developing infrastructure for recharging electric cars to fixing cracks, improving snow and ice removal and eliminating or reducing the parking of cars near bike paths. Among them are more controversial ideas such as meatless Mondays or eliminating streetside parking, perhaps reducing it 5 percent each year for two decades.

Maher is a fan of the New Urbanism approach of making neighborhoods more self-sufficient, which includes adding retail and density by building upward while replacing low-lying buildings with open space — a model the council pursued in Kendall. But he fears eliminating street parking will send drivers away from Cambridge and into the suburbs, and is unsure about such practices as the keeping of fowl, even if neighborhood egg collection and composting contributes to self-sufficiency.

“My skepticism around the issue is, we live in a city,” he said, “with many homes in the city on lots as small as 2,000 square feet.”

(He confirmed that he’s heard no one discuss centralized community areas for fowl such as Somerville or the Fenway has for gardening.)

Harvard’s Robert Winters, a longtime political observer who was instrumental in bringing curbside recycling to the city in the 1990s, said the process Saturday was clogged with special interests, each with agendas to promote under the umbrella of environmental consciousness.

But he also agreed with Maher, other attendees and the planning document itself that including the city couldn’t minimize the involvement of citizens, and as a result didn’t like what he perceived from the tone of Saturday’s event.

“Everything seemed to be focused on … passing responsibility onto the city,” he said after the vote. “I made the point that, if that’s the total outcome of this, then we’ve got a problem. One of my biggest regrets I have from when we got recycling going in the city back in ’89 to ’91 was that we had a volunteer army of about 500 people — and once the program became a city-run curbside recycling program, we never really capitalized on those 489 people. Most of them basically went their separate ways. It would have been so much better had we actually kept them engaged doing other things.

“So passing it off the city, saying ‘Form a committee, appoint some people,’ to me that’s a problem,” Winters said.