The next chief public health officer will be Derrick Neal, the city announced Monday, catching up with a city councillor’s resolution from Thursday that welcomed him.

The main public meeting this week is of the City Council, whose agenda includes items about the upcoming inaugural event, a real estate transfer tax, citywide rat control efforts, finding long-term space for nonprofit organizations in Central Square and much more.

A judge has refused to strike down a statewide mask mandate in schools across Massachusetts and mask orders specifically issued by Cambridge, the Cambridge schools, the town of Dover and 17 other school districts.

State Department of Transportation workers will shift and narrow all four lanes along Alewife Brook Parkway Bridge over the MBTA Walkway this weekend, and traffic will likely slow “throughout the winter months.”

Police were briefly in what they thought was an armed standoff Friday in East Cambridge, what they called “an active barricade situation,” but the situation was peacefully resolved, followed by one person being detained.

Cambridge reportedly has a new head of its public health department, though the news came via a resolution from city councillor E. Denise Simmons on the agenda for Monday’s council meeting, not an official announcement.

That half-mile section of Massachusetts Avenue between Dudley Street and Alewife Brook Parkway in North Cambridge has ignited debate around bike lanes in general. One city councillor called outreach around plans “woefully inept.”

The city’s Covid-19 vaccination campaign will now focus on children from 5 to 11 who are newly eligible to get a Covid shot, not older residents. The effort got started Wednesday with workers vaccinating 659 young children at a King Open School clinic.

Despite her work around diversity and inclusion on public art and monuments, city councillor E. Denise Simmons said that an attempt to include a Harvard-educated disability rights advocate of Eritrean descent in a playground naming “just doesn’t sit right with me.”

Public meetings this week look at bike lanes on Massachusetts Avenue; licensing for New Republik, a Barcelona Wine Bar and 286Broadway, a Housing Affordability petition, after-school program busing, an unarmed public safety program, Margaret Fuller House improvements and more.