Members of the Community Assistance Response and Engagement team of Cambridge’s Community Safety Department at a Monday meeting of the City Council. (Photo: Julia Levine)

The city’s new emergency response team that will serve as an alternative to police, the Community Safety Department, will start answering calls next month as planned, but had to cut out night and weekend coverage after laying off three of its eight responders in January, city councillors were told Monday.

At the same City Council meeting, City Manager Yi-An Huang hinted that chances have dimmed for a long-sought city contract with the homegrown police alternative, the Holistic Emergency Alternative Response Team.

Noting that Heart had so far drawn or requested only $54,000 of the $300,000 the city awarded to the nonprofit organization from pandemic aid funds last June, Huang said the group submitted a proposal for city funds only in December and did not follow a city grant formula. Heart hasn’t offered another proposal despite being told what kind of budget the city wants: one based on the cost of specific services rather than expenses for staff and other elements of the organization, city officials said.

“It has been difficult, we’ve been having [discussions] for 18 months,” Huang said. “I continue to be open to working with any organization that wants to make a difference in our community … I kind of think, at this point, Heart should really focus on utilizing the [pandemic aid] money.” After the group shows “more operational progress,” he said, “we can continue discussions about additional operational funding or deeper partnership in the future.”

Community Safety Department director Liz Speakman at Monday’s meeting of the City Council. (Photo: Julia Levine)

Councillors did not respond or question Huang’s statement, though the council has twice voted in favor of granting the group a city contract. Councillor Patty Nolan and vice mayor Marc McGovern said Heart has an important role to play in emergency response, since some people who need help would not seek it from a city department. City officials previously said they don’t intend to refer 911 calls to Heart.

Dan Totten, former aide to former councillor Quinton Zondervan and who lost a bid to join the council in November, said during public comment that Heart had not asked for more of the federal American Rescue Plan Act money because it has not yet made a hire it’s planning. The new city department has “essentially” co-opted Heart,  “with [the addition of] a little police,” Totten said. He said Heart’s failure to win a city contract “is a tragedy and a missed opportunity.”

Lack of answers on Heart

Heart co-director Corinne Espinoza didn’t immediately respond to questions Wednesday. A previous email to her asking about the organization’s contract proposals got an automated response saying answers would be slow. Heart’s website says it’s still not answering emergency calls and gives an email address for requests, with a promise that messages will be answered within a week.

The Harvard University newspaper The Crimson reported earlier that Heart was “baffled” by its inability to obtain a contract, quoting Espinoza as saying the group followed every direction it got from city officials, only to be given new requirements.

A public records request by Cambridge Day in January for exchanges between Heart and the city drew a typical response on Monday from the city’s Law Department. Part of the request for “any written contract proposals” by Heart, for instance, drew a befuddled reply that ignored the word “any” to say “it is unclear whether you are seeking final signed contracts or agreements, past proposals of a specific type or current proposals.”

Community Safety plans

As for the city’s Community Safety Department, director Liz Speakman said in an update report to the council that the “agency remains highly confident in its ability to effectively make a difference in the community through its outreach and follow-up efforts.” This month the team of responders has started answering calls from the community to pick up needles, she said. Next month the team will start answering 911 calls in categories such as people in a mental health crisis, requests to notify someone of a death, well-being checks and people who are not wanted on a property.

Huang responded to a question from councillor Paul Toner on “liabilities” for city responders by saying: “We are not sending responders into situations [where] we know there are clear dangers.”

Dispatchers at the city’s emergency communications center will decide which calls to pass along to the Community Safety Department team. Residents won’t be able to call a separate number to request an alternative to police, Speakman and Huang made clear, though Speakman said she would like to establish a separate number eventually.

Going through 911 dispatchers

That conflicts with one of the reasons to establish an alternative response: Some people aren’t comfortable dealing with police. “That is a deep hope and wish of mine that we’ll be able to provide [a separate phone number], because it is a very frequent question that we get of how people can access us directly,” Speakman said.

There are practical barriers, Huang said. “Setting up a whole triage system and the protocols, and the documentation that you would want to do for managing calls, is just a really big additional task,” he said. “And so I think what we really want to do is the primary directive behind this team was to be responding to 911 emergency calls. So we were going to prioritize that first.”

The Community Safety Department was given $1.5 million to distribute to community groups to help support its mission. So far it has awarded one contract: to My Brother’s Keeper, part of a national group founded by former President Barack Obama to support boys and young men of color after the killing of Trayvon Martin. The local chapter got $250,000 to provide summer and fall programs for youths in areas such as parenting, post-high school planning and mental health coaching. Police provided some staffing for the programs.

City spokesperson Jeremy Warnick said Thursday the Community Safety Department expects to issue a request for proposals within the next two months in connection with handing out the money.