Three more bicyclist die as lane timelines slow for parking reform. Collisions between motor vehicles and bicyclists killed three riders this year: John Corcoran, 62, on Sept. 23 in Area II near the DeWolfe boathouse; Minh-Thi Nguyen, 24, on June 21 at Hampshire and Portland streets in The Port neighborhood near Kendall Square; and Kim Staley, 55, on June 7 at Mount Auburn and DeWolfe streets, south of Harvard Square in the Riverside neighborhood. The deaths sparked long-asked improvements in the state-owned stretch of Memorial Drive where Corcoran was hit and looks at safety measures for when trucks turn in intersections, the cause of the June deaths. It’s a pattern that has been common at least since a pair of 2016 bicyclist deaths accelerated plans for road changes in Inman and Porter squares. All three deaths remain under investigation with the Middlesex District Attorney’s Office, with no charges issued against the drivers who collided with the bicyclists and no promise of information being released anytime soon. Despite the idea that the deaths might spur on the installation of bike lanes as part of the city’s Cycling Safety Ordinance, improvements to bike infrastructure saw a slight setback Oct. 21, when the City Council voted to extend the CSO deadline by several months, to November 2026. The vote was a slight compromise from the original proposal, which sought to extend the deadline to 2027, to give time for the city to draft an off-street parking ordinance so businesses could open their private spaces to the public and mitigate losses of spaces from new bike lanes. In the plan, heard throughout the spring and returned to the council for passage Monday, planners looked at some 45 “flexible parking corridors” around Cambridge and found an expected loss of 800 to 900 parking spaces to bike lanes, but a gain of as many as 3,400 off-street parking spaces that could be freed up by the proposed zoning.
There’s turnover and tumult in Cambridge Public Schools. Embattled Cambridge schools superintendent Victoria Greer was given 90 days’ notice on a vote of the School Committee on May 29, news long awaited after the leader was reportedly asked to move on at least two months earlier. That made her final months essentially a deathwatch after community evaluations showed declining patience among committee members with her leadership, including for her hiring choices and practices, and “school climate” surveys among the community showed the district failing to land in the highest quintile in a single area compared with 2,000 districts nationwide. One of her hires – of Graham & Parks principal Kathleen Smith – led to a seven-month investigation into a potentially toxic environment similar to one determined in a report by Newton Public Schools, which Smith left in 2019. The problems claimed at G&P “were not substantiated,” according to the findings, but interim district superintendent David Murphy nonetheless has decided to put significant resources into trying to heal the school. That isn’t Murphy’s sole big swing despite his interim status; after winning early approval from committee members that looks to keep him in place during a search for Greer’s permanent replacement (which could be him, and must be decided before Election Day, Nov. 4), he made significant staffing changes and has got committee backing to close the 51-year-old Kennedy-Longfellow School at the end of the 2024-2025 school year. The building will be renovated and get a reset on a school choice process that had created a student body including a disproportionate number of high-needs kids. The swagger took some committee members by surprise. Responding to his staffing decisions in September, member Richard Harding told Murphy, “You’ve been on how many days, mister superintendent? This is a hell of a move.”
Cambridge embraces cameras to feel safer. Twenty-four-hour surveillance cameras were approved by the City Council on Sept. 9 – at least for a test to start in troublesome parts of Central Square where police “have been really struggling to get a handle on all of the quality-of-life issues,” as police commissioner Christine Elow said. The decision had been building for a while, despite the city’s strong antisurveillance law that aims to protect citizen privacy by saying the council needs to approve the rollout of a new technology that might expose them. But when residents of The Port neighborhood fed up with gun violence met last year to brainstorm solutions, cameras were top of the list, and a shooting May 23 at Donnelly Field in the Wellington-Harrington neighborhood renewed the conversation. The combined urging seemed to override fears of footage being misused by government outside Cambridge. Still, little happens quickly, and while The Port residents got more cameras on private property, the Central Square equipment and technological needs are only now being finalized and locations set, police spokesperson Robert Goulston said Monday. “The goal is to have [cameras] up and running by April,” he said, or earlier if possible. Even slower to be implemented are body cameras for police officers, a response to the fatal police shooting of Arif Sayed Faisal on Jan. 4, 2023. The 20-year-old was wielding a knife during an emotional crisis; the incident led to a yearlong investigation that might have been sped by video evidence, but although union leaders have said publicly they support body-worn cameras, privately the unions have fought the change. “The city’s position of not compensating [union] members fairly for the care and maintenance of the new equipment” has been a sticking point, said Chris Sullivan, president of the Cambridge Patrol Officers Association, in July.
The zoning – and other efforts to build housing and housing affordability – never stops. It was just in October 2023 that the Affordable Housing Overlay zoning amendments known as AHO 2.0 passed the council in the hopes of seeing more homes built and making it easier for people of all incomes to stay in the city. A little over a half-year later, councillors were back with a proposal to encourage construction of multifamily housing across Cambridge by ending “exclusionary zoning” and allowing duplexes, triple-deckers and apartment buildings of up to six stories citywide back into the construction mix. (In a vote Monday, councillors voted to request revised language from staff that, if approved in February, would allow for four-story buildings in all residential areas, with an additional two stories if buildings include affordable units.) In July, a rezoning process for Central Square tested the tone on putting up residential towers, with staff settling on language to try in the spring to go up to 18 stories in Central’s heart and eight stories on the outskirts – with one of the challenges being how to ensure that builders of all-affordable housing keep their financial advantages. Aside from a single, 56-condo development applauded in North Cambridge in a July approval by the Planning Board, the action in home construction now is on the affordable side: 110 units for seniors in the Cambridge Highlands; 95 units known as Walden Square II in North Cambridge; a second attempt at 2072 Massachusetts Ave., near Porter Square; a Cambridge Housing Authority bid for properties owned by Lesley University in the Baldwin neighborhood, and Lesley sale of two parking lots for a couple of 15-story towers by the nonprofit Just A Start near Porter, followed rapidly by a deal for six homes extending into the Baldwin neighborhood from Frost Terrace, an affordable property on Massachusetts Avenue across from those lots. The crowning achievement was the Cambridge Housing Authority breaking ground on the Jefferson Park Federal project in North Cambridge – a $250 million price tag for 278 affordable homes.
Violence in the Middle East, disruption in New England. With thoughts turning toward what the politics of 2025 will bring, it’s almost hard to remember how pervasive Palestinian issues were in the first half of this year as Israel continued attacks that followed a shocking Hamas incursion. Stoked by a failed City Council order around a cease-fire in 2023, protesters began rallying at City Hall immediately in 2024 – forcing a Jan. 1 council inaugural event to recess – and returned repeatedly to urge the council to act until achieving passage at a Jan. 29 (online) meeting. Marches through Cambridge’s streets, protests of an Israeli business called Elbit with offices in Central Square, boycotts and staff walkouts at businesses and encampments at universities followed, growing in intensity after a crackdown at Columbia University in New York and Emerson College in Boston. MIT and Harvard camps hung on the longest in Boston, even joined by local high schoolers. When students returned back after the summer, though, tougher stances by administrations and the distraction of national politics made it harder to sustain action. It can sometimes be hard to determine what constitutes a win in political protests, but in this case demonstrators were confident they’d had an effect: Elbit ended its office lease, and organizer BDS Boston said in August that it was “a testament to our collective power.”
A recount of a state primary race on Dec. 12 ended with the reelection of Marjorie Decker in the 25th Middlesex District. Challenger Evan MacKay had seemed to edge Decker out by 40 votes at the end of an Election Day count Sept. 3, but after a hand count the next day Decker led by 41 votes.
The open-air entertainment complex Starlight Square was dismantled in late June after four years, removed from a city-owned parking lot after the city clawed back promised federal aid money.
A stronger
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This is a useful roundup that indicates there’s a lot of work to do to change course here in Cambridge towards making our municipal governing bodies more transparent and accountable to the public.
As a Graham & Parks parent, I’m especially glad to see mention of the mixed messaging Interim Superintendent Murphy has sent to our school community by declaring that there was no finding of a toxic environment (a legally slippery and difficult to prove finding, especially when the investigation is done by a firm that regularly represents CPS!) but then throwing resources at our school–without a clear plan or vision for the impact the resources are intended to have–to help us “heal.”
The truth is, there is no healing going on for the numerous families and staff who have been and continue to be harmed by Principal Smith. Instead, she has leaned into a narrative of being victim…of what? Being held accountable for being an abusive principal? Of staff not agreeing with her unilateral decision-making practices? Of parents reporting her practice of punishing staff members for speaking candidly to parents about declining learning conditions for our children in our school? And the district continues to enable her harmful behavior while divisions within the school building have become entrenched. The one person who needs to be held accountable, Prin. Smith, is being invested in heavily…. while Mr. Murphy decides abruptly to close another school that the district has willfully neglected for more than a decade.
I, for one, am ready for new leadership at all levels so that we can finally turn the page and start investing in our students, educators, and families, and stop investing in/protecting bad leaders.