These are just some of the municipal meetings and civic events for the coming week. More are on the City Calendar and in the city’s Open Meetings Portal.
Massachusetts Avenue changes
Massachusetts Avenue Partial Construction Working Group, 5 to 7 Monday. City staff and this group of advisers plans the second of two site walks to see travel behavior before proposing design changes in a $50 million project. This walk goes from Porter Square to Rice Street, just before Frank’s Steak House in North Cambridge, setting off from the red windmill sculpture at Porter Station, 1899 Massachusetts Ave.
Special summer meeting
City Council, 5:30 p.m. Monday. This sole council meeting of the summer looks typically big, with 27 agenda items from the City Manager’s Office and 21 from councillors that include three items put off from their last regular meeting in June. There are also 27 resolutions and a handful of reports that could get discussion – but it’s unpredictable, even when it comes to the Police Executive Research Forum weighing in on whether the Cambridge Police Department should have made public the name of the officer who shot Arif Sayed Faisal in Cambridgeport on Jan. 4, as called for by “justice for Faisal” protesters. Yes, the consultants say, “CPD could have – legally and ethically – released the officer’s name during the weeks after the shooting.” But the point is moot in this instance, as the possibility ended when a judge said “no information could be shared publicly until the inquest is complete.” The report says that “going forward, CPD should begin with the presumption that it will release the officer’s name within a specific period of time, and then thoughtfully consider whether reasons exist that would legitimately and in good faith justify withholding it from the public.” (Meanwhile, there’s a policy order from councillor Quinton Zondervan asking to know all outstanding and recent lawsuits around police officers on which the city is spending taxpayer money.)
There’s a legal opinion on whether the council can ask that speakers during public comment give their name, address and phone number, and the Law Department says the practice “would likely withstand public scrutiny if challenged.”
The city looks ready to act on buying a chunk of the National Guard Armory of Cambridge, which is next to the under-renovation Tobin and Vassal Lane school campuses. The National Guard doesn’t want to sell all of its land, but this 30,752 square feet appraised at $5.4 million could expand the sports fields, create learning areas and increase open space and walking paths; the city manager is asking for a closed-door session to talk about real estate. In other property issues, there is a report about Danehy Park in Neighborhood 9, where irrigation failed last year, killing trees. “There is a need for a fresh look at Danehy as a facility, as the original construction – including the irrigation system – is 30 years old,” the manager said. The city has a contract to develop a park plan for the next 10 to 20 years. There’s a look at all city property in the Central Square area too, focusing on how to use what’s underused.
It’s Affordable Housing Overlay annual report time, and the Community Development Department shows 16 sites being reviewed under the zoning and six AHO developments underway with a total of 616 units. Two (Jefferson Park Federal and at 52 New St.) are to start construction “in the coming months” and another (at 49 Sixth St.) in early 2024, the report says. The pressure on city Neighborhood Conservation Districts, historical commissions and a landmarks law that some are applying to encourage more development gets a look in two memos, with Charles Sullivan, executive director of the Cambridge Historical Commission, saying in one that proposed changes are objectionable because they undo a “fundamental” ability. Meanwhile, developments rejected by the districts and commissions are minimal – mostly under 1 percent.
Community Development is also ready with changes to cannabis laws, offering language that gets rid of special permit requirement and the need for favored “social equity” applicants to be Cambridge residents – none have been.
Councillors want staff to assess how the Alewife area would fare if zoning suggested by a working group is adopted; and for MIT to plant more trees to make up for what’s been lost as it develops the Volpe site in Kendall Square. Urban agriculture law changes return from 2017, when the council “ordained the beekeeping zoning amendment, but did not legalize the keeping of chickens” – a case that itself went back to 2010.
The council meets at City Hall, 795 Massachusetts Ave., Central Square. Televised and watchable by Zoom videoconferencing.
Fixing math education policies
School Committee, 5 to 10 p.m. Tuesday. A roundtable about teaching math is asked by three members after months of controversy over the district backing away from an eighth-grade algebra standard. Another motion calls for the superintendent to offer a program that “supports all students to prepare to enter Algebra I in eighth grade and expands and enriches learning for those who are already performing above grade level in math.” The meeting is planned for the Dr. Henrietta S. Attles Meeting Room at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, 459 Broadway, Mid-Cambridge. Televised and watchable by Zoom videoconferencing.
Affordable Housing Overlay
Planning Board, 6:30 p.m. Tuesday. The board gets proposed changes to the Affordable Housing Overlay – to allow 100-percent-affordable buildings to rise to 12 stories along the city’s main corridors and to 15 stories in the squares, which is taller than current zoning allows but shorter than the 13-story and 25-story buildings originally proposed as a change. The changes were before the City Council’s Ordinance Committee last week; the full council will vote next, taking both bodies’ recommendations into account. There’s also an extension request for a plan to demolish an 11-unit building in Central Square and put up one with 22 at 48-50 Bishop Allen Drive. When the project was first heard in June, vice chair Catherine Preston Connolly noted: “We have a design that hasn’t apparently changed in three years despite feedback from CDD, from DPW, from the neighbors, and yet it’s clear that changes are required.” Watchable by Zoom videoconferencing.
This post was updated Aug. 8, 2023, to reflect the actual time of the start of a School Committee meeting.
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The protesters are mostly Socialist Libertarians that hate this country. They just want to make trouble for the officer that justifiably shot a machete wielding person. Dont give in to these nuts!
For those who take for granted the design reviews, suggestions in development, protections of neighborhoods and contributions to the character of Cambridge- be aware that the historical commission (CHC) and neighborhood conservation districts (NCDs) may no longer be relevant if “amendments” to the NDCs pass on Monday.
This petition began as retaliation by its author protesting a study for an East Cambridge Conservation District, even disrupting a CHC meeting. At stake are 19th C worker cottages, historic homes and townhouses from a historic immigrant era when East Cambridge was a national industrial powerhouse. Two activist councilors have since championed his cause out of loyalty with the goal of making preservation almost ineffectual and making development easier. The amendments on Monday- focusing more on social issues than the historical commission’s purview of protecting material culture- are poised to eliminate its function.
Beacon Hill, Provincetown and Salem for example have their own character and also have some of the strictest Historic Districts in the State. An NCD is a customized flexible board overseeing mostly non-binding guidelines, design review and suggestions. That guidance is to be eliminated or diminished. The commission is there to prevent incongruous development by overseeing appropriateness of size and shape and dimensional and set back requirements (eliminated in the AHO 2.0). Absolutely fundamental to CHC function, those criteria are also on the chopping block.
These are Four Conservation Districts. There are 140 NCDs nation-wide holding Cambridge as the gold standard. From the CHC, of over 5000 applications for buildings or renovations under its jurisdiction, only 45 were denied. 2 of the cases were later approved after redesign. In Mid-Cambridge NCD, of 6700 applications since 1985, 101 were denied over 37 yrs but 92 were non-binding concerning details and builders proceeded as they wished. In Avon Hill, of the 800 applications since 1999, 7 applications were denied, 2 of the cases involved garages. In Half-Crown- since 2007, of 589 applications 11 were denied of which 3 were modified and later approved. 6 cases involved fences.
The argument that NCDs hold up or deny development is specious. Nor do they exacerbate rent prices or property values. The historical commission is also very adept at negotiations and amendments itself.
The policy now advocates that petitions need 100 Signatures instead of the standard 10 making it harder for citizen input.
Appointments to commissions by council (who are unqualified to make such a decision) do not mention any professional training, architects or keen expertise– rather, social make up and “enhancement” of the district” and “improvement” of a conservation district”. CHC doesn’t have jurisdiction over population distribution or enforced involvement. And “ideology” is actually listed as criteria, not protection of material culture.
Council is not qualified to designate or identify the significance of a potential NCD; it can rescind an NDC district without study, and NCDs have no oversight over AHO 2.0 buildings unlike the original AHO 1.0. The original AHO respected the conservation districts and historical commission. Not so with these amendments. AHHH…. There it is.
Amending the conservation districts and historical Commission (which agrees with most updates) is NOT ABOUT HISTORIC PRESERVATION OF MATERIAL CULTURE- BUT ABOUT THE AHO 2.0.
By taking the teeth out of a 60 yr program helping to shape the city, Council is using historic preservation divisively making it easier for developers without the perceived road blocks. The author has since left town. But this is the swan song of one of the activist Councilors before she leaves, hence the tenacity to get this past without understanding how the Historical commission helps regulate and guide the city of Cambridge making it the #1 city people want to move to.
Thank Pete I do wish I knew more about who you’re referring to. My plan is to vote them all out (except for 1 maybe 2) but I have no idea who I do want to vote IN.
All out but one or two is a good plan. one of the sponsors is already leaving. And we are losing the only councilor who understands the importance of design and architecture. Because people are so ANGRY we have many new really good candidates who base discussion on data, facts and analysis and not on dogma, ego, ideology or personal gain.
We need grown-ups in the chamber.
That is a remarkably wrong set of statements about so-called Neighborhood Conservation Districts.
To pick perhaps the most egregiously false statement, the fact that neighborhood landmarking drives up housing costs has been extensively studied and cannot be seriously disputed—here’s a thread of 29 studies with that same finding.
https://twitter.com/aaronAcarr/status/1392906698822668293?s=20
Moreover, of course NCDs drive up housing costs—that’s the whole point, to block new homes or apartments from being built! The instigators of the East Cambridge NCD process, still mad about the Courthouse redevelopment moving forward rather than allowing open piles of asbestos-infested materials to blow across the neighborhood while rotting indefinitely, specifically included that fact in their rationale for seeking an NCD in the first place.
Pete -great comment!
H. Cambridge. You are incorrect. NCD’s do NOT drive up housing costs. In Cambridge in our NCDs, the property values have not increased as steeply as non-NCDs. And in many NCDs we have our most naturally affordable housing.