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Friday, March 29, 2024

I’m Jesse Gordon, candidate for Cambridge City Council. I’m thrilled that Cambridge has a new daily newspaper — I hope it becomes a permanent part of our community and a forum for open discussion.

I’d like our City Council to also become a forum for open discussion. It is not. I’ve attended meetings of community groups all over the city. They have different agendas and disagree on many things, but one thing they all agree on: The City Council does not listen to them!

City Council meetings should be a primary forum for open discussion about city issues. All too often, the real decision making is behind the scenes without public input. Public hearings are perfunctory at best and citizen speakers are openly ignored at worst.

I want to bring accountability to our City Council. I want public hearings to be held around the city, not just at City Hall, and to hold them at times convenient for citizens, not just at times convenient for city councilors. I want the city’s records of City Council meetings to include a clear summary of what issues were concluded, which city councilors voted which way and when the next action on the issue will take place.

The City Council says in its annual goals statement that the members want open information about city government. But our city Web site doesn’t state how our city councilors voted on key issues. It doesn’t even say what issues were voted on!

I’ve worked for several years at the state level to bring accountability to our state government. I led the fight to pass “The Accountability Amendment” to the Massachusetts Democratic Platform, to publish voting records of our state reps and state senators. It was a tough fight, with most incumbents working hard against open government. But we won. Now we have accountability online at massscorecard.org. I want to do the same for city government.

I want to see open government in Cambridge so people feel they are heard by our representatives. I want to publish a “Citizen’s Guide to Cambridge” so people can readily figure out their way around city government. I want people to be able to understand our political system, so they can have their views heard and work toward making Cambridge a better place to live.

If you believe in accountability in our city government, please vote for Jesse Gordon with your No. 1 vote on Nov. 8. Check out my Web site for more — jessegordon.org.

Jesse Gordon

Porter Square