The city-owned First Street Garage has a $50-per-month deal that lets locals get cars off the street during months in which there might be snow. (Photo: Google Maps)

Blame for overcharging at the city’s First Street Garage was taken Monday by Susan Clippinger, director of Traffic, Parking & Transportation.

“The problem occurred in the department, not with the vendor which operates the garage. We failed to get the information properly to them,” Clippinger said Monday while taking questions from the City Council. Her own department also failed to notice the error. “We do go over those reports, and the person handling those reports was the person I’d failed to communicate directly with to make sure they knew the change had been made, so they weren’t picking up on it.”

“There’s really no excuse for what happened and I apologize for that,” she said.

The 245 First St. garage is in East Cambridge, near the Lechmere T stop and the Cambridgeside Galleria mall.

Residents can park at the garage, operated for the city out of the Boston office of Standard Parking, for $50 per month from November through March, but nine residents paying by credit card were being charged double that amount. Councillor Tim Toomey, who brought forward the topic and questioned Clippinger, said he found out only because one resident left him a message full of “salty”language explaining he’d been offered a bargain rate of $50 — “and it wasn’t a cost savings, this is what they were entitled to from the beginning,” Toomey said.

“How could a mistake like this happen?” he asked, saying that with the economy as it is, and considering the program is intended to keep cars off the streets in case there’s snow, “this is, to me, unacceptable.”

He did, however, appreciate Clippinger taking responsibility and the city’s efforts to correct the situation.

The residents who were overcharged were offered either refunds or credit toward future parking fees, with the credit winning out, according to City Manager Robert W. Healy.

There aren’t similar deals offered at other city garages because they’re better used, Clippinger said, and her department didn’t want to risk having too many cars for too few spaces. The Green Street Garage, which was mentioned in the the report filed with the council, is excluded “because it’s very well used now,” she said.

Councillor Ken Reeves, though, wondered how that could be so, since a primary reason the Green Street Garage filled so frequently was its use by police and their visitors up until 2009, when the department was freshly moved to 125 Sixth St. from Western Avenue and Green Street in Central Square. In a couple of years the building is to be filled with offices for the Cambridge Housing Authority, Multi-Service Center and Community Learning Center.

“I know it’s popular with the business community, etc., but a lot of people could not be parking there. I think the whole top floor, in fact, was police officers, so there must be another answer to that question … I wonder if you might revisit the conclusion you stated” about use of the Green Street Garage, Reeves said. “I’m sure that the census of who’s in that garage must be down significantly based on no police.”

State Rep. Alice K. Wolf

The MBTA’s proposed fare increases and service cuts will hurt riders, the environment and economic growth. Yet, imagine, this is only a one-year fix.

It is time for the Commonwealth to have a plan for putting the T on stable financial footing for the long term. No more magical thinking. There are no easy answers.

When we moved the MBTA to Forward Funding in 2000, we in the Legislature — along with the governor — made a fundamental mistake by requiring the T to fund over $3.3 billion in state debt in addition to the debt already on the T’s books. More than half of the state debt was for Big Dig-related projects. In addition, growth in the sales tax, the source of revenue tapped in the 2000 reform, has fallen short of projections. So since 2000 the T has struggled with a crushing debt burden, inadequate revenue and increased operating costs.

We, as a commonwealth, must invest in our public transportation systems for the sake of our residents and the health of our economy. This can’t just happen in the State House. We need consensus from the people of Massachusetts for the Legislature to act. When Rep. Carl Sciortino, D-Medford, and I filed legislation in 2007 and 2009 that would have provided the T with additional revenue through a gas tax increase, opposition from the public undermined support in the Legislature and eventually killed the bill.

Through this debacle we learned that it is important for those of us in the Boston metropolitan area to work harder at public outreach and education across the Commonwealth. There are a lot of misconceptions out there based on inaccurate or outdated information.

Forward funding and the 2008 transportation reforms have had a positive impact on T operations. I just read that the T may have the most advanced automated customer systems in the country. Furthermore, many management and labor issues that were of concern a few years ago have been addressed.

Everyone in Massachusetts benefits from public transportation, whether we rely on it for our daily commute, spend less time in traffic because there are fewer cars on the road, breathe a little easier due to reduced motor vehicle emissions or recognize its economic benefits for business and tourism. Seniors, teens, disabled and low-income residents can get around because of the T. We have to look past our individual frustrations and regional disputes to focus on the common good.

It will take a dedicated revenue stream to address the T’s unsustainable debt, maintain a state of good repair for T assets, improve overall MBTA service and meet the needs of residents in other regions. Two options that have been proposed are increasing the gas tax or tolling Interstate 93, but both options have major detractors. How come the Middle East oil cartel can make decisions that increase gas prices a dollar or two and people buy it, but we can’t raise the gas tax a much more modest amount without a public rebellion?

The era of magical thinking must end. Public transportation is essential for all of us around the state, and all of us have to pay for it.

Alice K. Wolf is the state representative from the 25th Middlesex District in Cambridge. She is the House chairwoman of the Joint Committee on Elder Affairs.

Panera Bread baguette is good for a chain, great when it’s hot out of the oven and over-the-top terrific when it’s an example of good customer service. (Photo: Robyn Lee)

I think the Porter Square Panera Bread is here to stay for a while — and I suddenly have warm feelings to hope that’s so.

The eatery, which opened July 6 at what is technically 5 White St. in the shopping plaza, is Porter’s answer to the gourmet-ish comfort food of Au Bon Pain enjoyed by folks in Harvard, Kendall and Davis squares. But it did something for me last night no Au Bon Pain, its one-time kind-of owner, has ever done: won my cranky customer’s heart with great service.

I went in too late Tuesday night and found the basket of baguette (what the company likes to call “French baguette”) empty. I quizzed the workers with some desperation as to whether there might yet be a loaf hiding out somewhere, or even anything like a baguette. But no, the site had been slammed that day and had run out hours ago of an appealing plain bread.

Since Panera is my only local baguette option, I was out of luck. I didn’t even bother checking the nearby Shaw’s grocery store to see if it had any store-made baguette, which is not only the most expensive baguette I know of, but probably the worst I’ve ever tasted. And, if it’s not too old a joke, it usually sells out by the time I go looking.

Wednesday, though, I made it to Panera earlier; was briefly shattered to see the basket empty again; then elated to hear there were loaves just then fresh from the oven, so fresh they hadn’t been slipped into paper sleeves and stocked. I ordered one. “How many?” the manager asked. “Just one,” I repeated, asking the worker at the counter how many he thought I could eat.

But he gave me two — explaining it was to make up for my disappointment the previous night. (I don’t remember crying, just whining.)

Nice going, Panera manager.

I was stunned and delighted, a feeling that lasted through my walk home in the cold tearing off hot hunks of crusty bread, and lingered afterward.

Qdoba lasted there from January 2005 to June 2010, despite how universally its Mexican food was disdained compared with the competing Chipotle chain and certainly the Anna’s Taqueria across the street. With service and product such as this, Panera should be around for decades. And I may buy baguette there every night I can.

(Because we’re past that union problem, right?)

Each meeting lasts an hour: from 7:15 to 8:15 p.m. Nov. 30 and from 6:50 to 7:50 p.m. Dec. 7. People interested in participating should dial 1 (877) 229-8493 and punch in the number 13034 when prompted. To ask a question, press *3 after joining the meeting.

“I hope you can participate in one of the meetings to talk about the issues that most concern you. There are many challenges facing our country, from the economy and jobs to federal spending priorities. Congress will likely spend most of December focused on the federal budget and on how to reduce the deficit,” Capuano said.

Constituents with questions about the meetings can call (617) 621-6208 or visit Capuano’s office at 110 First St.

A redistricting that will carve Cambridge in two makes Capuano one of two U.S. Reps. who will be representing Cambridge. He will have the new 7th Congressional District, made up of parts of the city in North Cambridge and closer to the river, while U.S. Rep. Edward Markey will be representing the central chunk in the new 5th Congressional District.

Reps. Wolf, Tim Toomey and Jonathan Hecht had submitted an amendment in the House suggesting that a swap be found that would unite Cambridge while preserving the majority-minority district, Wolf said, and a comparable amendment was filed in the Senate by Sens. Patricia Jehlen, Sal DiDomenico and Anthony Petruccelli.

But the House amendment failed, Wolf said.

“Cambridge has been united in the 8th Congressional district — the new 7th — for at least 70 years. This was Tip O’Neill and Jack Kennedy’s district, with all of Cambridge at its core,” she said.

The redistricting will carve Cambridge in two — a central chunk being represented by U.S. Rep. Edward Markey as the 5th Congressional District and parts in North Cambridge and closer to the river being represented by U.S. Rep. Mike Capuano as the 7th Congressional.

Shuttle bus service will replace train service along the Harvard to Alewife route. Representatives from the MBTA came to State House on Nov. 2 to brief legislators on the project, followed by a public presentation the same evening at Somerville High School. They assured us that they will do everything they can to reduce impact on weekend T riders. The replacement shuttle service will run more frequently than the normal red line schedule, with buses running every two minutes at its busiest times. They also promised to have customer service personnel and ample signage at each location to assist customers. In response to our concerns about people waiting outside in the middle of winter, the MBTA has assured us that the stations will remain open, allowing people to wait for the shuttle buses inside. Lastly, extra attention will be paid to snow removal at the affected stations. Several of the elected officials present at the legislative briefing pressed MBTA officials on the need for a heightened level of customer service to mitigate the inconvenience that our constituents could experience during these coming months.

The main focus of the project is to replace failing concrete slabs along the bottom of the tunnel tracks. The tracks are mounted onto concrete slabs, which are then placed on rubber disks to absorb shock and to reduce noise and vibrations. Many of these concrete slabs are badly damaged due to water filtration into the tunnel, as well as decades of deterioration. Part of the project will be to replace the damaged slabs and seal the tunnel to reduce water leaking into the tunnel. Simultaneously, they will be replacing a large amount of general track and third rails throughout the tunnel. Some of the recent train breakdowns in this area of the red line have been caused by third rail corrosion, worsened by the water leaks in the tunnel. This project will address this problem by replacing these sections of rail.

We are all committed to seeing this work completed in the least disruptive way possible, and will do our best to monitor progress and customer service throughout the project. We, the MBTA Legislative Caucus, and the MBTA would appreciate your feedback.  Should you have any questions or concerns or should you experience any issues, you can contact the MBTA Customer Support Services directly at (617) 222-3200. You can also call the MBTA toll free at 1-800-392-6100.

Sen. Patricia D. Jehlen, co-chairwoman of the  MBTA Legislative Caucus

Rep. Sean Garballey, co-chairman of the  MBTA Legislative Caucus

Rep. Carl Sciortino, vice-chairman of the MBTA Legislative Caucus

In a proposed redistricting, almost all communities in Massachusetts are represented by a single person in Congress. Cambridge, though, would be carved into two districts.

Only hours after his reelection, city councillor Leland Cheung was back at work Wednesday, raising the alarm about a congressional redistricting that would carve Cambridge in two — a central chunk being represented by U.S. Rep. Edward Markey as the 5th Congressional District and parts in North Cambridge and closer to the river being represented by U.S. Rep. Mike Capuano as the 7th Congressional District.

The map was released Monday by state lawmakers’ Special Joint Committee on Redistricting of the Massachusetts General Court. But things are moving fast.

“We only have until tomorrow for the public to comment,” Cheung said. “This undoubtedly hurts our standing in Congress because we’d go from being one-seventh of a district to one-fourteenth.”

Capuano represents all of Cambridge at the moment in the 8th Congressional District — a structure in place for seven decades that allows the interests of Cambridge, Somerville and Boston to be handled as one. A change in population reflected in recent census figures brought on the redistricting.

“Parts of Cambridge will be represented by someone who also needs to balance the needs of Revere, Chelsea and other urban areas, and other parts of Cambridge will be represented by someone who also needs to balance the needs of Southborough and other suburban areas,” said Susana Segat in her CCTV blog.

Cheung noted that “Capuano has his district office in Cambridge for a reason” and said “residents need to know to weigh in.”

By passing around tips from Daniel Schlozman, chairman of Cambridge’s Democratic City Committee, Cheung is trying to ensure that. With the deadline of 2 p.m. Thursday, people are urged to tell lawmakers they want Cambridge kept whole in the 7th Congressional District by:

Contacting Mike Moran, House chairman of the Joint Redistricting Committee, at at (617) 722-2460 or michael.moran@mahouse.gov.

Contacting Stan Rosenberg, Senate chairman of the Joint Redistricting Committee, at (617) 722-1532 or stan.rosenberg@masenate.gov.

Supplying written testimony to the Joint Redistricting Committee at malegislature.gov/District/Contact.

Schlozman can be reached at daschloz@gmail.com or (617) 519-8555.

The balance of power between the City Council and city manager is out of whack. As Robert Winters wrote on his Cambridge Civic Journal, “The authority of a city manager does tend to grow with tenure,” and with Robert W. Healy holding office since July 1, 1981, his authority is mighty indeed. Having been setting budgets and hiring, firing, appointing and dismissing throughout City Hall for 30 years, he has vastly more knowledge of its workings and the infrastructure in place to get things done than could even the longest-serving city councillor — Ken Reeves, who has been in office for 22 years.

Yet the City Council is the policy setting arm of the city (in the language of the Plan E charter, it “shall have and exercise all the legislative powers of the city, except as such powers are reserved by this chapter to the School Committee and to the qualified voters of the city”) and the city manager is, our charter says:

“the chief administrative officer of the city and shall be responsible for the administration of all departments, commissions, boards and officers of the city [and shall] act as chief conservator of the peace within the city; to supervise the administration of the affairs of the city; to see that within the city the laws of the commonwealth and the ordinances, resolutions and regulations of the city council are faithfully executed; and to make such recommendations to the City Council concerning the affairs of the city as may to him seem desirable; to make reports to the City Council from time to time upon the affairs of the city; and to keep the City Council fully advised of the city’s financial condition and its future needs. He shall prepare and submit to the City Council budgets … Such officers and employees as the City Council, with the advice of the city manager, shall determine are necessary for the proper administration of the departments, commissions, boards and offices of the city for whose administration the city manager is responsible shall be appointed, and may be removed, by the city manager.”

But for all that, the city manager seems to set a lot of policy. Just to name some recent examples, it is said universally that Healy decided to appeal the Malvina Monteiro lawsuit against the city, despite his involvement in it; and it was his decision to create the Cambridge Review Committee to look into issues surrounding the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.; and when the council has asked him not to send police officers to Israel for training, he does; and when the council asks him to take down surveillance cameras, he doesn’t.

“The council looks utterly foolish, we look powerless,” said Reeves in October 2009, as another Election Day loomed. “We’re not involved in policy or anything on too many matters. We need to be informed on what we can and cannot do.”

An opportunity

At the time, councillor Sam Seidel welcomed “an opportunity to learn, relearn, rethink” council powers and responsibilities, including some that may have drifted into the city manager’s portfolio over the years.

“Councils come and go, but the city manager sticks around,” Seidel said even before that, when he first ran for office in 2005. “Healy has been very successful at managing the city, and as a result has garnered a lot of power.”

But that opportunity to relearn and rethink never happened, and the council looks just as powerless now as it did two years ago, and surely even more complacent and willing to let the city manager do the heavy lifting. It is dispiriting, for instance, that it fell to a citizen to bring forward a suggestion (which Seidel says councillors like!) to give the city’s safety inspectors the power to fine offenders. Councillor Henrietta Davis may exclaim during a meeting about “How long does it take for us to enforce a zoning violation!” and the council can hear several years’ worth of complaints from residents about noise, garbage, rodents, work-hour violations and structural damage at a single development at Yerxa Road and Rindge Avenue — but it never occurs to our incumbents to give inspectors the same powers held by their peers throughout the state and nation?

And why would Healy ever give up power to a feckless set of councillors that can’t even get its act together enough for a look at whether it’s surrendered its rightful powers over the decades? From his perspective, it probably just looks like it would screw up what he’s created: a resounding fiscal success, with low tax rates that make Cambridge the envy of the commonwealth and constant refreshment via award-winning capital projects such as the Cambridge Main Library and four upcoming school revamps (atop similar excellent high school, athletic facility, police station and youth center projects).

But there’s some legitimate question as to whether Cambridge’s success is attributable to Healy so much as Healy’s success is attributable to Cambridge. The city is, after all, across from Boston and possessed of three major institutions of higher learning; it’s been a center of industry and innovation all the way back to the days of ice carving and brick making, and its real estate has been desirable back further than that.

Such is the power of Healy that even such a gentle surmise sounds like heresy to some, but the magical thinking that has enchanted so many on the council doesn’t work on every member of the general public.

Magical thinking

That magical thinking — or failure of critical skills — is on display when councillors Tim Toomey, Davis and other suggest that after a dozen years of litigation in the Monteiro case, the 16 boxes of legal documents and transcribed testimony from the case hold some kind of detail that will cause the city to see it all in a whole new light, as though we’re all in or watching a very long, dull M. Night Shyamalan movie, and that somehow the city’s highly paid lawyers not only couldn’t make a judge and jury see this twist, but couldn’t even articulate it so it could filter out into the city. And that for some reason no public official can explain it either, even though it’s in those boxes somewhere and the cases have been settled. Toomey’s suggestive comment is that, since jurors cleared the city of discrimination but found it guilty of retaliation — which still seems like $4.5 million worth of a bad thing — “Certainly we cannot predict how a jury’s going to find. We saw the case of the [inaudible] in Boston, the woman in Florida … was found innocent, a lot of people felt otherwise.”

If he’s trying to say Casey Anthony was really guilty when she was found innocent, doesn’t that mean Cambridge managers could actually have been guilty of the charges they were cleared of? And, anyway, which looks worse: That the city retaliated against women of color? Or that there’s incredibly obvious exculpatory evidence in those boxes that its lawyers, at hundreds of dollars per billable hour atop the $146,902.23 we pay our city solicitor annually, couldn’t use to save us from three multimillion-dollar settlements and two embarrassing appeals court findings? And it’s Healy who does the hiring.

Maybe the jurors and judges were just too dumb to grasp it, but elected officials claiming so should remember that Cambridge is a city that’s packed pretty much border to border with accomplished professionals and holders of advanced degrees, not to mention some outright geniuses in various innovation industries and academic settings. This is the city where school officials can’t even plan campuses in peace because there are too many architects among the parents who want a say. We even have some pretty bright candidates for City Council this year, and most indicated during the campaign that an O. Henry ending to the Monteiro saga seemed sort of unlikely.

For instance, Tom Stohlman has three degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, including for the no-dummies-allowed field of chemical engineering, and here’s what he said about council hopes that the public shares its blind faith: “It is appalling that the city manager and the City Council have refused to release the details of all the settlements and the ‘secret’ discussions regarding the cases. Despite having ample time to do so before the election, they have deprived the voters, the challengers and the rest of the city of the chance to be informed. If they continue to do so, we may never have the chance to learn from what happened and avoid the same outcome in the future.”

(What’s even more interesting about this is that it was Toomey who said at a Sept. 27 candidates forum: “I think the city is very transparent in everything we do. And we have a very active citizenry. So I don’t think there are any secrets out there that people don’t know.” Maybe a next step for Toomey would be a policy order asking for a report on how many Freedom of Information requests were filed with the city in the past two years, how much the Law Department planned to charge for each and how those cases were disposed. And he might ask himself: If the council sets the policies, and he discovers the city manager’s Law Department is less than “very transparent in everything” it does, and that in fact there are “secrets out there that people don’t know,” what will he do about it?)

Is our council ready?

With Healy’s contract ending Sept. 30, it’s possible a brand-new city manager will soon be running Cambridge, and that person may come from outside the city. Especially in this situation, the balance of power will fall back to the council, and it will find itself setting a lot more actual policy and holding a lot more actual responsibility.

Is our council ready?

Although the shorthand of Cambridge Day’s guide to city manager issues reduced the positions to “pro-Healy” and “anti-Healy,” this election isn’t about him — and it’s more than possible to be pro-council without being anti-Healy.

For some, this election is about having a City Council that lives up to the charter and is, at the least, on par with the city manager in terms of power.

And they may think the council needs a bit of new blood to achieve that.

Hundreds of people have joined a campaign on Change.org calling on Greyhound to eliminate the $18 fee for buying online bus tickets for friends and family, according to Change.org senior organizer Tim Newman.

Shawn Ambrose, a father, veteran and an assistant professor of business at The University of Saint Francis in Fort Wayne, Ind., launched the campaign on Change.org after realizing he would be charged an extra fee to buy a bus ticket for his daughter to visit their home in Indiana during a break from college — and that the fee affects mainly those buying tickets for budget-conscious travelers trying to save money by taking the bus.

“This fee is a burden on those who are trying to help others,” Ambrose said. “Greyhound caters to a demographic hoping to save money on travel costs, and while I was able to avoid the fee by having my daughter purchase her tickets with her debit card, many people do not have this option.”

“Greyhound has the gift ticket fee because they can,” Ambrose continued. “While researching the gift ticket fee, I was unable to find any business that had such an onerous fee for a third party e-transaction.”

Greyhound told Ambrose that the fee was an anti-fraud measure, which the company also tried in 2010 before giving it up when finding it impossible to explain how it helped precent fraud. Also tried: “It is kind of a ticket processing fee for the time and expense involved in transferring the name,” according to Greyhound spokeswoman Bonnie Bastian, who was unable to explain what that meant or any role played by people in a Web-based credit card transaction resulting in a computer printing out a ticket at a Greyhound station ticket counter. Workers there would have to enter a name into a computer rather than a credit card number, but the additional time spent seems insignificant.

“I just wanted to call back and say it’s not a fraud fee,” Bastian said last year.

Sounds like someone needs to make a similar call to Ambrose and Change.org — not that it’ll help.

Critics note that other bus and transportation companies do not impose similar fees.

“Hundreds of consumers have joined Shawn in expressing their concern regarding Greyhound’s gift ticket fee,” Newman said. “With just a computer, Shawn has created a campaign that is attracting the attention of many other bus travelers, particularly as the holiday travel season hits. … Shawn’s campaign clearly resonates with other consumers across the country.”

Something the new campaign doesn’t notice: It is impossible to print tickets at home, on a printer attached to a personal computer, unless the buyer of the tickets is traveling. There are many times a credit card holder may want to buy a Greyhound ticket for someone in their own household who will be traveling to another destination — but they will find it impossible to buy that single ticket, print it and hand it to the person traveling.

This post took significant amounts of material from a press release.

Having posted a short list of candidates for whom not to vote, here are some that stand out as voices that seem the most valuable in guiding Cambridge forward in the next two — or more — years. These are names that should excite voters for the roles they play or could play; tasks they perform or could perform; and potential for great ideas and leadership.

(Those not mentioned, of course, are mostly the candidates who fall into the space between the lists, including several incumbents whose work may have been good or even outstanding, especially for a certain constituency, but who also present enough troubling aspects to diminish the confidence or excitement a voter can feel ranking them high on the ballot.)

Council incumbents

Leland Cheung gathers signatures during his reelection campaign for City Council. If voted back in Tuesday, he will be serving his second term.

Leland Cheung has been on the council for only one term but has achieved a tremendous record balancing innovation and constituent service. It is a cliché to look at the youngest member of a body and identify that person as being the best able to guide a city into the future, but Cheung makes it difficult to avoid. Throughout his first term he has sought technological solutions that serve the people, starting nearly immediately upon election with urging the city manager to bid for Google’s ultrafast Internet proposal and following it up with bringing crime statistics to citizens via the police BridgeStat system, Wi-Fi to people in city parks and the details of city manager contracts to at least the beginnings of transparency (as was supposed to happen the last time the contract was voted). With his entrepreneurial and international background and studies at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he has an innate sense of the needs of Kendall Square and its denizens and pressure points in town-gown relationships, and a strong sense of where to guide Cambridge’s square mile of innovation — his Entrepreneurs Walk of Fame being a masterstroke that needs to be maintained and capitalized on. He also stood up to the cynics and fought to meet with Boston officials to form a regional approach to luring businesses, another necessary step into an increasingly globalized future. Cheung is low-maintenance and high-productivity, and he listens.

It was mildly depressing to watch Cheung join the council with such enthusiasm and urgency and watch it be submerged into the mire of bureaucracy, caution and lack of creativity that bogs down so many of his fellow councillors, turning every council initiative into such a slow, dispiriting slog. This submersion (and subversion) started even before a mayor was elected, as Cheung presented three potential solutions to an eight-week stalemate that was keeping work from getting done and really starting to be embarrassing. But his older and allegedly wiser peers maintained the mantra that “this is our system; the system works,” raising objections that merely proved they hadn’t been listening. Even worse was when councillors David Maher (by then the mayor), Sam Seidel and Tim Toomey blocked Cheung’s effort to extract promises from Kendall Square developer Boston Properties for getting housing, low-cost office and lab space for entrepreneurs and public amenities such as a grocery store and public art for Kendall Square — exactly what the city’s highly paid consultant will eventually say is needed there.

“We never operate on this calendar,” Seidel told Cheung, explaining how the council prefers to move at mind-numbing slowness on even the simplest matter. “The shortest turnaround time typically is Monday to Monday. Zoning matters typically take weeks.” (Weeks? We wish.)

For the sake of Cambridge’s future and the people who need help and hope now, Cheung must be reelected with the revivifying message: “Don’t listen to the comatose councillors. Keep fighting. Take action.”

Craig Kelley was first elected to City Council in 2005 and has since developed a reputation as stubborn and irritatingly contrarian. It turns out he is also often right. (Photo: Liv Rachelle Gold)

Craig Kelley frustrates his fellow councillors. Rare is the person who doesn’t acknowledge Kelley as a stubborn, contrarian, potentially showboating, gigantic pain in the ass. But what must be really frustrating for them is how often Kelley is right.

Whatever the secret votes were to support the city manager’s disastrous appeals of the Malvina Monteiro lawsuit or block release of other details to the public, Kelley made public efforts to take control of Law Department spending, including the most recent parts of the $3 million spent litigating the case, and secure the city’s rights to sue its own lawyers for what is essentially legal malpractice; argued against closed-door meetings and for the public’s right to speak on the matter; and asked for the release of information in the cases that didn’t affect future litigation, or at least for the city manager to say when it would be released. Did he actually act behind closed doors to prevent the release of information, as councillors Ken Reeves and Marjorie Decker say? Sure, that’s possible. Eventually we’ll know if and why Kelley acted in this somewhat implausible way.

Because Kelley usually has reasons for acting as he does, maddening as it may be. Like when he stood alone and voted “no” on a city manager contract that had been conducted by two councillors — Maher and Brian Murphy, now on to other things — but wasn’t posted for review by the public as councillors agreed it would be.

He was also ahead of the curve on insisting repeatedly on more enforcement of traffic laws, including for bicycles, a cause that gained force and resulted, two weeks ago, in the city manager promising a fresh look at the issue and more enforcement. It wound up looking like a win for Kelley. When Henrietta Davis proposed a law against brakeless bicycles, which Kelley reminded her already exists at the state level, she wound up just looking like someone who’d seen something on television and wanted to tell people about it.

In December, Kelley suggested looking at the repercussions of retirements among high-level staff such as the city clerk, city manager and his deputy, and most of the council gang-jumped him — Reeves and Seidel being exceptions — with a somewhat hysterical charge of age discrimination. Even Cheung, who should have known better from the times his own policy orders have been misread and the intent ignored, climbed aboard to beat on Kelley. Now a campaign season has revealed that the government would be in disarray with the departure of the city manager and city clerk and, while neither is desired, neither seems unlikely, either. There is no coordination and only the vaguest consensus among council candidates about the process for replacing the people who’ve been running the city for decades. Instead of freaking out, councillors could have looked ahead a few months and seen the increasingly likely need for a process to be studied, agreed upon and put in place; instead they chose to ignore it for 11 months.

Soon we may have a lame-duck council; a January inaugural; a possible repeat of the eight-week delay (or longer) in appointing a mayor to decide committee assignments; and, in March, a rude surprise from our 30-year manager. Then the council can get to work with its usual alacrity.

Maybe the next council will be less about the occasional self-serving drama and more about listening, even to the outliers, to see if there’s value in their suggestions. Obviously that could be important if Kelley is reelected. And both those things would be good ideas.

Ken Reeves is the longest-serving member of the council and an advocate for Cambridge’s various pleasures, including restaurants, clubs and the arts. (Photo: Liv Rachelle Gold)

As Cheung’s candidacy is about the technological future of Cambridge, Ken Reeves’ is about its future as a center for the pleasures of life, because what makes life worth living is what makes Cambridge worth visiting. More than any other incumbent — or challenger, for that matter — Reeves represents the sensual and artistic aspects of the city needed to be in place if Cambridge is going to keep growing as a creative mecca. It is his vision for Kendall and Central squares especially that is bringing the city closer to a new, attention-getting festival, more music (if he can break an archaic city law about having nightclub doors only on Massachusetts Avenue or Green Street), better dining, the 24-hour pleasures worthy of a world-class city and even a little forgiveness for the noise of occasional revelry. While plenty of councillors might think to convene a task force looking at the amenities and concerns of Central Square, only Reeves would feel the need to convene on “the Delights and Concerns” of Central Square.

There is also the sheer pleasure of hearing him speak and seeing him saunter around the city, always dapper, but these are hardly defensible reasons to elect a politician. Meanwhile, his legislative efforts can be disorganized, and it is sometimes shocking to hear the things he seems not to know, considering his role as the council’s longest-serving member. (Did Reeves, a graduate of the University of Michigan Law School with a private practice in Cambridge, really need the city clerk to read him the justifications for a closed-door meeting?) But that just leads to another pleasure of having Reeves in office: His wildcard nature means never quite knowing whether he is asking a question for himself or for his constituents, or what he’s going to do next, which suggests that even his placement in the pro-city manager camp is suspect when push comes to shove. His request for funding to “undertake academic or legal counsel to review the Plan E Charter” back in October 2009 was certainly intriguing, suggesting that he feels the council is capable of doing more — an applaudable idea in a city where the manager seems to be setting far more policy than its policy-setting arm.

He also serves a vital role on the council, namely as a conciliator between factions who can return a pointlessly heated exchange to reasonable room temperature and seek out the logic behind even the most assailed suggestion. Which is not to say he cannot unleash some righteous fury of his own at times; again, in addition to his strengths as a legislator, it can also be fun just to hear him orate. Cambridge would be a poorer, less fun place without Reeves helping lead it.

Council challengers

Marquardt and vanBeuzekom

Voters could be forgiven for thinking Charles Marquardt and Minka vanBeuzekom are already on the council. With Marquardt’s experience in small business and finance and his canny analysis of the city’s long-term budget needs, and vanBeuzekom’s history of community advocacy and focus on workable environmental solutions — especially when added to their consistently measured and practical public speaking — is is doubtful Cambridge has ever had two candidates so ready to take office.

Stohlman

Close behind them is Tom Stohlman, whose campaign is marked not just by good sense but by a sense of civility and calm that befits an architect and self-described nerd. His rationality and common-person approach would be as welcome on the council as his knowledge of zoning and record of land-use work with cities including Hingham, Reading and Andover. And Boston. And Cambridge. Every neighborhood uncomfortable with the direction development is heading would likely feel more comfortable with Stohlman on the council.

Mello

Gary Mello is getting involved in politics for the first time, but he’s entering with a bang. His wish for a two-year ban on development is unlikely to go anywhere; his suggestion that the city make Cambridge Health Alliance its provider for municipal employees’ health care is an exciting and worthy one, sure to save taxpayers money while boosting the alliance and raising its quality of services for everyone. In general, the taciturn Mello wants Cambridge off the cycle of raising revenue that inflates the power of developers at the expense of residents. That sounds like a good idea.

Richard Harding, Marc McGovern and Patty Nolan are seeking reelection to the School Committee. (Photos: Liv Rachelle Gold)

School Committee incumbents

Parents, educators, students and the community are in good hands with Richard Harding, Marc McGovern and Patty Nolan. These are public servants who have proven they are willing not only to put in the long hours of mastering mind-numbing policy minutiae, but to take bold and sometimes unpopular votes because it’s the best thing for students and the city. When it came time to decide on the district restructuring called the Innovation Agenda, Harding looked past his many reservations, voted in favor for the greater good and vowed to make the plan work no matter what, not flamboyantly voting against the plan on a single issue; McGovern looked at outcomes and courageously made a call he knew would cost him supporters and even friends; and Nolan applied her usual, laser-focus objectivity that pretty much ensures a vote is correct. These are not pandering politicians, but serious-minded officials who are passionate about their charge and dedicated to seeing the Innovation Agenda is done right, and they need to be returned to their seats.

School Committee  challengers

Osborne

Mervan Osborne is an exciting prospect for the School Committee: polished, accomplished and inspiring and possessed of several attributes that align perfectly with Cambridge’s nature and needs, including a bent toward the arts and an admirable technological savvy. Talk with Osborne and his team and you can literally feel the eagerness to engage with district issues on a substantive level. But most important is his experience at Boston’s Beacon Academy; voters unhappy with Cambridge’s achievement gap need the benefit of what he’s learned there.

Holland

John Holland is a solid, nonideological second choice for the committee — or first choice for anyone whose primary concern is keeping the district spending wisely and focused on best practices. While there are sound reasons Cambridge spends $25,737 per pupil, Holland seems serious about bringing his professional experience to bear in guaranteeing taxpayers know those reasons and see the results.