Democracy demands a lot. It requires private citizens to make themselves vulnerable as candidates and devote months of their lives to campaigning for office. It requires other private citizens to become informed about issues and candidates and to decide who should be elected, and in Cambridge, in what order. And then those elected must work together on behalf of the electorate for the community’s common good, advancing solutions to hard problems.
Voting is a profound privilege and beautiful opportunity to be heard. But, sadly, in Cambridge, only about 30 percent of the voting population vote.
Tuesday is your chance to determine Cambridge’s future. What do you want Cambridge to be like in 2035? Who do you want to live here? How will we move around the city? How well will we be prepared for the effects of climate change? Will we continue to be a welcoming, diverse, inclusive City? If so, we have to work at it.
Democracy works only if you vote. Come to the ballot box Tuesday or before!
Cathie Zusy, Hamilton Street
Cathie Zusy is a candidate for Cambridge City Council.
A stronger
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Sorry Cathie I cannot read this. You missed the deadline.
The deadline for submissions has passed, not the deadline for publishing. It’s not rocket science.
Voting should not be considered a “privilege,” that implies another imparting that gift or entitlement to do so by birth. It should be seen as a basic human right in any and all democratic organizations.
I agree with nearly everything Ms. Zusy wrote. Unfortunately, she’s not the candidate to deliver on any of it.
Zusy is, to put it as politely as possible, wildly ignorant on housing policy. She’s published factually incorrect claims about the number of affordable housing units in the pipeline, over-reporting them to the the tune of 200%. She seems to have taken unfounded and incorrect CCC numbers at face value and simply repeated them without doing any basic fact checking of her own. She’s claimed that serving the Can’t Wait list would cost the city billions, a false claim that relies on a complete misunderstanding of both average per unit costs and the basics of affordable financing. I’m not saying I disagree with her opinions on these things; I’m saying she’s made provably wrong claims of fact. And she has not, to my knowledge, retracted either false claim to date.
No one knows everything. I think most reasonable voters would agree it’s good to have different councillors come in with different areas of policy strength, and that it’s okay to elect people who show a commitment to learning what they don’t know. But it’s not okay to just make things up, or to repeat things that your friends have made up without checking.
Ms. Zusy seems like a nice person, but frankly I think we should expect more diligence from our city councillors, especially on as important an issue as housing.
Jess- trash talk is your forte often with showing little evidence of understanding the broader issues — much less the nuances of complex problems.
I think Cathie did a good job on Magazine Beach, but her campaign has been uninspiring. She spent so much time talking about what she opposed that we never really learned what she is for
Interestingly, Ms. Zusy is one of only six candidates out of twenty four to have taken the trouble to come and meet with and hear from residents in my affordable housing building here in Cambridge. (Where are the all-but-three of the virtue-signaling candidates backed by “A Bigger Cambridge,” I wonder??) It’s hard to know exactly what Ms. Zusy may or may not have actually said at one time or another as “Jess” provides no evidence or references for any of his/her assertions whatsoever. Could we get some actual facts perhaps?? Searching Zusy’s campaign material for “published” statements about her position on housing, I have found and include below a key summary from her campaign website. (It sounds reasonable enough to Bono.) If a candidate getting numbers and facts wrong is a reason not to vote for them, I wonder how “Jess” views Burhan Azeem, for example, who Bono has heard twice take credit for allegedly “improved service” on the MBTA! The only problem with this absurd claim is that service on a number of bus routes has actually been *reduced* – in some cases, twice in just the last year-and-a-half. And the Red Line continues to move at the speed of an f-ing tricycle through most of Cambridge, due to the interminable “go slow” orders imposed by the Federal Transit Administration along extensive sections of subway track. Ah, but with public transit allegedly so vastly improved, according to candidate Azeem, we should certainly soon be forging full-speed ahead with “transit oriented development” for all those poor lower income people who will soon be living happily, and gratefully, in what the new head of HRI likes to call “vertical neighborhoods”! Cathy Zusy may have gotten some numbers wrong (perhaps she misspoke?), but at least she’s not an outrageous liar.
Statement from Zusy website on housing:
“I support building more subsidized housing that fits harmoniously within neighborhoods. There’s no doubt that we need more housing of all types. If we engage neighborhoods proactively in siting housing they will be more supportive of it. Community and Planning Board review will result in better design.”
Cool story Jerry.
Of all the candidates running I dont think Zusy is one to be too concerned about.
It’s not intended as trash talk. I’m sincerely worried we may elect someone who plays fast and loose on the facts when it comes to an important issue.
Insult my understanding all you want; I’m not running for city council. Regardless of other positions or approaches, I hope we can all agree it’s not okay to repeat false claims of fact.
If Zusy is elected I hope she serves well and has a successful term, because that’s best for Cambridge. I just hope she’s willing to admit mistakes and not continue to repeat objective falsehoods – because that’s also what’s best for Cambridge.
Both false claims are in her Cambridge Day piece entitled, “There are ways to create more affordable housing aside from Affordable Housing Overlay 2.0.” The inaccuracies were pointed out in the comments, from me and others. She’s never addressed it, and the piece is still up without corrections.
She claims 1500 units are “in play” when in fact there are 616 units in the pipeline, barely more than a third of her number. I’ve only seen the 1500 figure one other place, in CCC propaganda. They just made it up, and she repeated in uncritically in both her CD piece and candidate forums. She used it to support her argument against the now-passed AHO amendments.
Source for the 616 figure: https://www.cambridgeday.com/2023/08/09/changes-to-affordable-housing-overlay-advance-though-planning-board-must-return-on-aug-29/
The financing thing is much sillier. She took one instance of unusually high unit costs and assumed all units cost that much; they don’t. She also seems to think the city pays the entire cost of affordable housing; it doesn’t, not even close. So she did a little napkin math and said adding 3000 affordable units would cost the city $3 billion. That would be super alarming if it were even close to true! It’s not. It’s ridiculous.
I think it’s more likely the false claims are ignorance rather than lying, but she made them nearly two months ago and has been informed they’re wrong. But she repeats them anyway. I think that’s bad for democracy, I honestly do.
Zusy is entitled to her own opinions, but not her own facts.