In addition to passing a tax rate increase and declining to intercede in school-related contract negotiations, Cambridge City Council on Monday also saw policy orders recommending the decriminalization of sex work and a pause on Huron Street bike lanes charter righted, delaying a vote for a week. City staff also got the go-ahead to begin drafting recommended changes to the city’s major upzoning law.
Safer sex work
At its meeting Oct. 5, council will revisit a policy order aimed at making sex work safer for those in Cambridge who engage in it. Initial steps include anti-poverty measures and a community safety call line for sex workers in danger of being exploited. It also calls for the state legislature to support full decriminalization of sex work statewide.
Dozens of advocates in pink t-shirts came to speak or show their support of the policy order. Some of them stayed through the marathon public comment period and until the end of the meeting, when the order was charter righted by Councillor Patty Nolan over concerns that full decriminalization – of those who buy, sell, or are otherwise involved in the trade of consensual sex – may not be the best path forward.
“I think that we are all agreeing that there is a real need for decriminalization,” Nolan said, but that “full decriminalization, which this calls for, is problematic for a number of advocates.” She added that she hoped to spend the next week adjusting some of the language in the policy order so it can be passed at the meeting on Oct. 5.
Most who spoke on the policy order said they were in favor of the measure, including current and former sex workers themselves. They said that by decriminalizing their line of work, sex workers who are in the industry consensually can freely contact law enforcement in the event that they are abused, without fear of being arrested themselves.
One speaker shared her story of escaping a locked house where she had been forcibly trafficked. When she reported the incident, she was met with suspicion.
“I called the police … I was frantic, and I kept repeating ‘They’re pimps, they’re pimps,’” the speaker said. “The officer on the other line said ‘So, what does that make you?’”
Some who spoke during public comment also cautioned against advocating for complete decriminalization, including advocate and former trafficking victim Audra Doody. She said that from personal experience, “the buyers [of sex] never ask how old you are or whether you want to be there,” and that the terms of consensual arrangements are often broken.
Doody was time-limited during the public comment period, but spoke to Cambridge Day about her experiences after Monday night’s meeting. She still believes in partial decriminalization in order to protect the sellers of sex, but prefers the equality model of decriminalization, which generally views sex workers as victims of exploitation but not criminals themselves.
“If you do full decrim, it’s just opening the floodgates. Who do you think is going to get dragged into it?” Doody said, noting that consent can be tricky to navigate when one party is under financial strain, as many sex workers are. “Traffickers and pimps go after vulnerable community members … shame on us if that’s their only survival mechanism.”
Whichever type of decriminalization the council chooses to support will have limited effect without the agreement of other county and state partners. The current policy order as written asserts the arrest of sex workers should “continue to be amongst the lowest law enforcement priorities for the City of Cambridge,” and calls on the Middlesex DA’s office to stop prosecuting people engaged in consensual adult sex work as well as those who provide support services to sex workers.
Drivers take aim at Huron Ave bike lane expansion
Also returning to the council’s agenda next week is Councillor Cathie Zusy’s policy order pausing construction on separated bike lanes along a quarter-mile stretch of Huron Ave for at least five years. The construction, authorized by the city’s Cycling Safety Ordinance update in 2020, is expected to begin this fall and finish in the spring.
The construction plans have reignited rivalries between bicycle riders seeking more protection from cars, and drivers frustrated by increasingly limited places for them to park. Some residents estimate that the bike lanes will eliminate about 50 parking spaces near recreational spaces and amenities, including the Fresh Pond Golf Course, Glacken Field, Russell Youth Community Center and the Veterans of Foreign Wars center. The spaces are also often used by residents of 700 Huron Ave., a 250-unit apartment building in the Strawberry Hill neighborhood. One recent petition calling for a stop to the new lanes has over 1,500 signatures.
But bike lane advocates emphasized the importance of making that particular route safer, noting that neighboring Belmont has its own plans to expand its network of bike lanes that would connect to Cambridge via Huron Ave.
Cambridge resident Ian McGoldrick said during public comment that he feels safer biking with his toddler in separated lanes.
“The value of the network is to have routes [for] biking that are continuous and allow us to get to our friends in Arlington, Belmont and other places,” McGoldrick said. “It’s our primary mode of travel.”
But Zusy said this connectivity comes at too high of a cost for others, such as the portion of residents at 700 Huron who have low incomes.
“You’ve got a tremendous demand for parking. And it’s not like other neighborhoods where you can have people go into the neighborhoods to the right or to the left because you’ve got a cemetery on one side and then you’ve got a golf course on the other,” Zusy said. “I realize this is a very difficult problem to solve, but it really must be solved.”
Councillor Marc McGovern said that preserving parking in that area should be a priority – but can be done without altering the CSO’s goal of achieving 25 miles of separated bike lanes by the end of November.
“I cannot vote to delay this five years … we would have to reopen the Cycling Safety Ordinance to reduce the number of miles,” McGovern said. “But I am sympathetic, especially to the folks at 700 Huron Ave, about the loss of parking there.”
McGovern and Mayor Sumbul Siddiqui introduced a substitute policy order asking city administrators to develop options for preserving parking in the area, while letting construction continue. Ideas include having the remaining spots for unrestricted parking turn into daytime metered spaces that convert to residential spaces in the evening to give more flexibility for commuters and to work with the Fresh Pond Golf Course to manage its parking. This introduction led to Zusy charter-righting her own policy order, which will be brought back for debate next week.
City to present potential MFHO amendments before end of the year
Councillors affirmed a policy order that originated in the ordinance committee requesting city staff to present options for amending the Multifamily Housing Ordinance. The options should include analysis on their impact on housing development. Assistant City Manager for Community Development Melissa Peters said that the Community Development Department will be ready to present options back to council in six to eight weeks.
The measure drew a significant number of public comments Monday night, with advocates urging council to pursue changes, keep the ordinance the same, or get rid of the MFHO entirely. But passage of the policy order was expected, since it had already cleared the Ordinance Committee, which consists of the entire membership of City Council.
Councillor Patty Nolan requested that when city administrators report back to council, they re-investigate one option that the city had previously rejected during the initial MFHO debate: what is known as the 3+3 model. Instead of allowing four stories as-of-right in most residential areas of the city with an additional two for inclusionary projects, the order would cap non-inclusionary projects at three stories.
“I know you did a ton of work modeling a lot of this,” Nolan said to CDD staff present at the meeting, “but I do think that this was something … worth exploring and including in the analysis.”
A stronger
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