People always ask me why I want to be a city councillor. I used to just say that it seemed like a part of one's civic duty to take your turn on the Council if you felt you could do a better job than someone currently there. It was never an issue of political aspiration or power. Though I still feel this way, I now recognize that one can accomplish more in a council seat than in the gallery or as an activist.Rather than make the usual shallow statements about how I stand "for safer streets" and "for fiscal responsibility," let me just post here some answers I gave to specific questions, adapted from the various questionnaires and personal correspondence that have arrived over the last month or so. If you have any other questions, let me know. One way to get involved is by coming to my Online Meeting.
-- Robert
Ph.D in Mathematics, 1990 Graduated summa cum laude from Queens College, City University of New York Graduate work in Mathematics at MIT and Boston University
Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Boston University and Wellesley College, 1990-1994
Preceptor in Mathematics at Harvard University, 1994-present
I have lived at 366 Broadway in Mid-Cambridge since 1978, first as a tenant and then as the owner of this 3-family house. I drive a 1979 Brown and Orange VW Bus which I love dearly.
I served on the Mayor's Advisory Committee on water and wastewater issues during the late 80's and used this opportunity to educate myself on every aspect of these infrastructure matters affecting every citizen of Cambridge.
In 1989, I joined with a handful of volunteers and began Cambridge's all-volunteer recycling program that ran until 1991 and which proved so overwhelmingly popular that the city acceded to our requests for a curbside recycling collection.
Since 1991, I have been the person that has responded to all questions posed on the Cambridge Recycling Hotline. I have served on the Recycling Advisory Committee since 1991.
In 1992, I formed the nonprofit Cambridge Recycling, Inc. which promotes home composting and which provides composters to residents at the lowest cost anywhere. I do all this as a volunteer and receive no compensation for my efforts. We now have provided composters in about 1000 Cambridge locations.
I am a person who is capable of setting goals and getting them accomplished. In April of this year, Cambridge's Committee for Environmentally Desirable Practices awarded me its first ever award for a volunteer for my efforts. This year everyone is calling himself or herself an environmentalist. For some of us, this is more than just a fashion statement. This is what separates me (and Frank Duehay) from the other candidates.
>From 1990 to 1992, I was an organizer of Cambridge's Earth Day celebrations along the Charles River. My personal goal was to get all city departments to put together presentations showing residents exactly what roles they played in environmental matters in the city. My hope was that this would translate into a greater emphasis in these matters within these departments during the entire year. I feel that we were very successful in this endeavor. While other candidates talk of making the city more "user friendly," I have been doing this all along.
I have served on the Coordinating Committee of the Mid-Cambridge Neighborhood Association since 1992 and have taken stands on Harvard's encroachment into the neighborhood, developing a pedestrian friendly park in Quincy Square, making the Central Square area a better place to live and work, and much more. I am the only candidate in the race who lives in Mid-Cambridge, the most populous of the thirteen designated neighborhoods of Cambridge.
In 1993, I was a founding member of the Central Square Neighborhood Coalition. Our first goal was to force the City to more equitably distribute service agencies and to make the area safer for all people who live and work in the Square. We then began working via our Economic Development Subcommittee to lure the kinds of businesses to Central Square that we felt would be an asset and to dissuade detrimental interests from locating there. Our efforts have been very successful to date.
Our main thrust since 1994 has been the work of the Central Square Committee, appointed by City Manager Bob Healy, that successfully secured a $3.6 million dollar appropriation from the City for streetscape improvements. We have been overseeing the planning from start to finish, working with the architectural firm of Carr/Lynch/Hack/Sandell, the same firm that is doing design work for the Charles River Basin.
Next year, the plan will be implemented. It will bring broader sidewalks, socially oriented seating, dramatically different pedestrian-oriented lighting and street trees with irrigation systems far superior to anything the city has ever done. The Plaza in the center of the Square will be totally redesigned. Automobile traffic will be reorganized for smoother traffic flow, bicycle lanes will be installed on both sides of Mass Ave, and pedestrian crossings will be reduced from 70 feet to about 46 feet. Passing along the Massachusetts Avenue corridor will give one the sense of passing through a series of "rooms," each with its own character. On the side streets, there will be improved lighting and plantings and the parking lots on Bishop Allen Drive will be reconfigured and landscaped. This work has already begun.
Rent control has been repealed. What impact do you believe ending rent control will have on diversity, and what steps would you propose to deal with that impact?The relationship between regulation of rents and economic or ethnic diversity is not as straightforward as this question suggests, as evidenced by Somerville which is every bit as economically and ethnically diverse as Cambridge. Diversity in Cambridge is more a function of a well managed Cambridge Housing Authority than it is of rent regulation.
We should concentrate our limited resources on low and moderate income residents only. Subsidized housing now constitutes 12% of the rental units in the city and serves mainly our low income residents. We need to provide for low to middle income residents, especially people on fixed incomes, elderly residents, and families.
Special attention should be given to those tenants who have been living under rent control and who will soon be losing their protected status. This is best accomplished on a case-by-case basis, crafting solutions for each individual situation rather than applying the broad brush.
The new initiatives being carried out by the Community Development Department in facilitating homeownership opportunities is right on target and long overdue. Other proposals contained in the CityHome Program drafted earlier this year should be implemented forthwith, especially the use of the Affordable Housing Trust Fund to leverage other financial resources in order to provide more affordable rental and homeownership opportunities. Though the proposed annual budget for the program is $2 million, this figure might be raised somewhat, depending on the actual increases in revenue from newly assessed deregulated properties and on other demands on the budget due to federal and state cutbacks.
Regarding the proposed "10 Million Dollar Plan" circulated by tenant activists, I am wary of being asked to "buy a pig in a poke." The fine details of the plan are unknown, who the beneficiaries would be is unclear, and the availability of funds is questionable. Of the various candidates who have endorsed this plan sight unseen, my reaction is that any candidate who would commit to the expenditure of city funds without a thorough review of what they were buying with taxpayer money does not, in my humble opinion, deserve election. Cambridge must step up to the plate to help as many people as possible whose lives have been disrupted by the abolition of rent control. However, Cambridge cannot house the nation.
I believe that potentially the largest number of affordable units are those provided by small private property owners throughout the city. It is crucial that we maintain good relations between these housing providers and those tenants who would rent from them.
What is your opinion on the proposed "Community Empowerment Act" that tenant activists hope to put on the ballot in next year's statewide election?This is a very nice sentiment written into a very bad law. While I acknowledge that government does have the ultimate right to regulate the use of property, there must be checks to ensure that limitations on property rights are not the subject of political expediency. My objections basically fall into four categories, each one of which would cause me to vote against it. They are:
1) An "emergency" implies a situation so serious that there is no other recourse other than to take extreme action. The proposed act allows an emergency to be declared by simple majority vote based on essentially any condition that a local legislature finds objectionable. This section begins with "Such conditions include, but are not limited to:....." In other words, anything at all.
2) Even if a city or town chooses not to declare an emergency, any subdivision of said town or city that can identify itself as a "community" in a manner consistent with a local planning board may, via initiative petition, declare an emergency and enact the provisions of the Act. This sort of action is not a model for how property and land use should be regulated.
3) This Act serves as a back door way of enacting land use regulations when attempts at zoning fail. Zoning laws are a serious matter which should not be subject to the shifting political winds. Investment in any kind of property demands a stable regulatory environment. The provision in zoning law requiring a two-thirds supermajority vote or, if there is sufficient objection, a three-quarters supermajority vote, is designed to provide this stability. The Community Empowerment Act might better be called the Economic Destabilization Act. If certain aspects of Cambridge's previous rent control law required supermajority vote, this would have forced the compromise that many of us found so elusive.
4) There is dishonesty implicit in the Act. Specifically, the activists who authored it are trying to link their issues with "the environment" by suggesting parallels with the Mass. Rivers Bill, the desire to limit WalMart type developments, etc. This is clearly a political tactic. Even if one deplores what Question 9 called for, no one can deny that its intent was clearly and singularly stated.
It should never have been necessary to take Cambridge's inability to find compromise to the state for a decision. This points to the fact that localities are not necessarily capable of acting fairly and without political influence. Cambridge's failures essentially nullified Boston's and Brookline's success at finding compromise on the rent control issue. What occurred in Cambridge was a high stakes game of political poker. In retrospect, the outcome of this tragic game was inevitable.
Townhouse units packed onto vacant lots increase the density of residential streets and rarely meet the growing need for low and moderate income housing. How will you address these housing needs while preserving the scale and quality of residential life?The appropriate place for greater density in housing is near transportation centers. Encouraging density elsewhere only increases automobile commuting. Meeting the housing needs of people of low and moderate income is best achieved by keeping existing housing units as affordable as possible. This is best achieved by supporting the continued efforts of the Affordable Housing Trust Fund, keeping pressure on federal and state authorities to ensure the continued affordability of units in expiring use buildings, and supporting the mission of the Cambridge Housing Authority.
How will you work to shape the physical growth of Cambridge to encourage an increase in pedestrian, bicycle, and mass transit use, and update zoning codes so that new development will use enduring human-scale principles?I serve on the Central Square Committee which is currently working with an urban design team to physically redesign much of the streetscape of Central Square. This includes a reduction of travel lanes (road surface) without adding congestion, the addition of bicycle lanes, widening of the sidewalks on both sides of Massachusetts Avenue, the addition of many socially oriented seating areas throughout Central Square, and the addition of more magnificent street trees with dramatically improved aeration and irrigation.
The pedestrian environment has always been our top priority. Our hope is that this will attract quality, service-oriented development to Central Square, that jobs will be created for local residents, and that the area will become a safer and more pleasant place to be. As a city councillor, I would strive to see the same efforts we have done in Central Square repeated in Porter Square, Inman Square, and throughout the city.
I support neighborhood-by-neighborhood zoning changes to replace what were de facto zoning regulations on use under the old rent control laws. I support height restrictions that ensure that new construction blends in with existing neighborhoods. I support increased density near public transit nodes consistent with the principles of sustainable design, and density bonuses elsewhere in exchange for the provision of affordable housing units.
What would you consider to be the optimal balance between small and large businesses in the City, and how can it be achieved?The "optimal balance" is not something that we should try to impose. It is determined by the economics. We must act in accordance with consumer needs and choices. For example, if people want affordable groceries and if larger stores are the best way to achieve this goal, it is not right to obstruct consumer choice by creating an environment that is hostile to these stores, especially if the end result is to cause financial harm to our less affluent neighbors. I am disturbed that some would dictate exactly which stores should be allowed to do business in Cambridge without paying attention to what our own citizens actually want and need and to where they choose to shop.
In the Central Square Neighborhood Coalition, we work with four neighborhoods, the business community, and city departments to achieve balanced, cooperative results. We don't approach things from a good guy vs. bad guy perspective. Our approach is a model for how civic action should occur throughout Cambridge.
What does the term "economic development" mean to you? What can residents of the neighborhoods of Central Square expect regarding level of service delivery, given the Prop. 2 1/2 levy limits and declining state and federal revenues?I think it is wrong to have a one-size-fits-all policy on economic development, driven by the burning desire to raise more revenue to fund ever more services. Some economic development, such as that in the Lechmere area, can be very beneficial. It turned an industrial wasteland into an economic engine for the city. University Park needs to be developed in a manner that supports the Central Square area, provides affordable housing, and does not overrun Cambridgeport with excess traffic. One policy that should be universal is that a balanced, inclusive community process should accompany all significant development proposals.
What do you think about further development of Harvard Square? Harvard Square is, from my point of view, fully developed. Regarding the proposal for the site that now houses the Wursthaus, I want anything that happens there to be at a scale that conforms to the current scale in that area. I have firsthand knowledge of the very poor condition of the existing building and, though I'd like to see the facade of the building remain roughly how it is, I remain open-minded regarding the possibility of replacing the building. A good architect should be able to retain the facade of the existing building, improve the interior with some added height, and produce a building that will be worth saving 100 years from today.
How much control over institutional and business development should each neighborhood have during your term as City Councillor?Any substantial development should be accompanied by responsible, inclusive community process in its planning. I do have a serious concern about what constitutes "neighborhood control." In Cambridge, this has sometimes meant unrepresentative, noninclusive cliques appointing themselves as spokespersons for neighborhoods. Democracy requires real representation and not what former Mayor Alfred Vellucci used to refer to as "the self-anointed, self-appointed." If you want a good example of how community process can be amicably and productively conducted among residents, commercial interests, and city officials, give us a call at the Central Square Neighborhood Coalition. I am a founding member and serve on its Board of Directors. If you wish, I can provide examples of failed community process in Cambridge. This failure rate is why I won't automatically endorse "neighborhood control" over institutional and business development. Intelligent, environmentally sensitive planning is one thing. NIMBYism is another thing altogether.
How do you propose to stimulate sustainable business growth that will produce jobs for residents?I would take as a starting point the guidelines laid out in the Cambridge Growth Policy Document, entitled "Towards a Sustainable Future." Development proposals need to be evaluated one at a time. The best approach is to keep a set of guidelines with sufficient flexibility.
One idea in tax policy I'd like to explore is the possibility of a reduction in the taxable portion of the assessed value for properties that house job-producing small businesses, analogous to the residential exemption that exists now for owner-occupants of residential units.
What was your position on Memorial Drive Stop & Shop?There were no easy decisions here. For me, meeting the needs of many low and moderate income residents of the area was a higher priority than insisting on a smaller, more expensive store. I never accepted the contention by some that the minimal use of a small section of Memorial Drive for some truck traffic would lead to some sort of domino effect for MDC roadways. That argument had no basis in fact. I felt that the portrayal of this issue as an environmental issue was somewhat disingenuous, and that there were private agendas galore in the entire affair.
To those of us who took the time to get to know all of the facts in this situation, we thought we had an acceptable compromise, with a store similar in size to the Star Plus on Mt. Auburn Street. Instead, we now have a highly profitable computer superstore that meets very few of the needs of residents in this area. In the meantime, Star Market was able to build an even larger store across the river in Allston at a site with a far worse traffic pattern. I have no doubt that it will be very successful.
What we all understood from early on was that this was a very valuable piece of real estate and that operating a grocery store with minimal profit margins was not the "highest and best use" for this property, according to existing zoning. We sought a compromise in order to keep the use as a grocery store rather than as high-rise condos or as a high profit retail operation.
There are some who liken the situation with the store to the invasion of WalMart stores in small-town USA. Nothing could be further from the truth. When a WalMart moves into an area, it can wipe out downtown retail districts and small businesses. What we had on Memorial Drive was an existing supermarket. The net effect of its closure has been that residents now have to travel further to go to another supermarket, causing a net increase in vehicle miles traveled and overcrowding at the remaining area stores. The building of the new store would have had very little effect on "downtown retail districts."
I am currently very active in the movement to site an acceptable, affordable market in this area. I have sought to understand this entire matter in a way that incorporates both economic and environmental criteria.
Most people want cleaner air and water, more tree-lined streets, safer parks, additional private and community gardens, environmentally-sound businesses and residences, and more quiet places. How much more do you think the City needs to do to promote these environmental qualities?We need to seize opportunities as they arise for open spaces and parks, particularly in areas like Mid-Cambridge which is sorely lacking in open space and recreational opportunities. Better irrigation and more magnificent trees are preferable to more trees of short life-span. This is what we are planning for Central Square and what you'll be seeing next year. I am a strong advocate for community gardens and have played a lead role in arranging for the composting of organic materials in most of the community gardens in Cambridge.
I am President of Cambridge Recycling, Inc., a nonprofit organization that provides low cost composters for residents of Cambridge and surrounding communities. I am a founder of the volunteer recycling committee that ran the City's recycling program prior to the curbside recycling program. I still serve on the Recycling Advisory Committee and respond to questions on the Recycling Hotline.
I have applied for a seat on the Cambridge Water Board and have expertise in the water and wastewater systems of the city and the region. I have been an organizer of Cambridge Earth Day celebrations on the banks of the Charles River. This year I was awarded the very first award for volunteer work by the Cambridge Committee for Environmentally Desirable Practices, primarily for my efforts in promoting recycling and home composting. I have a record in environmental action, not just a plan copied from a magazine.
What is your position on the use and sale of public lands for business use in the Alewife area?
Don't do it. If you are referring to the continued use of a piece of MDC property as a parking area for Arthur D. Little, the only proposal I find acceptable is a land swap for an equivalent or better parcel nearby that will result in no net loss of parkland and which will not have a deleterious effect on the wetland, much have which have already been compromised over the years.
What endorsements have you received?I have not sought endorsement from any partisan political organizations. I strongly believe that local government in Cambridge should be as nonpartisan as possible. When I ran two years ago, I received endorsements from both local newspapers, including the #1 endorsement from the Cambridge Chronicle. These and other nonpartisan endorsements are the only endorsements I welcome.
When I was a candidate two years ago, my ballots transferred mainly to other "progressive" candidates. With this the case, some have asked why I chose not to seek the endorsement of the Cambridge Civic Association (CCA), especially in light of the fact that its new president, Geneva Malenfant, is a good friend of mine. Here's why:
1) Several years ago, I served on the Board of Directors of the CCA. At the time, I could see that we were headed for a major showdown on the issue of rent control and that it was very important to find a compromise in much the same way as Boston and Brookline had done.
I joined the CCA's Housing Committee and began advocating for discussions to begin between CCA leaders and some of the "more reasoned representatives" of the Small Property Owners Association (SPOA). After a few meetings there was a clear movement toward dialogue.
At that point, the Chair of the committee declared that instead of dialogue, it was more important that we "take care of our traditional electoral bloc." In other words, if sitting down with SPOA led to reform, it could jeopardize the progressive/rent control political coalition, and that coalition was more important than finding compromise.
Two years later, rent control was abolished and those of us who advocated reform would not have the opportunity to find a middle ground. I had hoped that a new home-rule petition could find this middle ground, but the entrenched sides chose not to budge. The CCA could have prevented this confrontation if only they had been willing to start to negotiate.
Even in 1994, with Question 9 on the horizon, Councillor Born, chair of the Rent Control Subcommittee of the City Council chose to cancel all future meetings until the election had passed. I am not yet convinced that the CCA has learned its lessons on this issue and that we may see this played out next year during the statewide election.
2) CCA endorsement carries an implicit, if not explicit, requirement that its endorsed candidates vote as a bloc in the selection of the Mayor, the officials hired directly by the Council (especially the City Manager) and on major issues. Though the organization has always had a hard time getting its councillors to stay in line, the expectation is still there and it can cost a councillor politically if he or she steps out of line. I cannot operate in such an environment and I would not want to be singled out in the way Mayor Reeves was two years ago for joining with non-CCA councillors in his reelection as mayor.
Though I was an Alliance endorsee two years ago (and a founder), the fact is simply that many people who voted for me found my affiliation with the Alliance to be a poor match. The affiliation didn't really help me. I was not born in Cambridge, was not an ideologue against rent control, and took generally progressive stands on most issues.
Even though it is probably a dumb move politically, I have chosen to simply be "unaligned." All things considered, it is much easier to live within my skin this way, even if the political dice roll against me. I remain very friendly with many people on both sides of the great political divide.
Do you think Ken Reeves ought to be re-elected to Mayor?I like Ken Reeves and feel that he has been our best ally in our efforts to revitalize the Central Square area. On the other hand, two consecutive terms as mayor is enough for any person. My two top choices for the next mayor are Frank Duehay and Sheila Russell. Either one of them would make a great mayor.
Civic Forum participants have proposed that the City use its resources to strengthen neighborhood associations and other community organizations while ensuring that all voices are heard, and to find ways to get more people involved as neighborhood participants, including block parties and other gatherings that are not agenda-oriented or politically driven. What measures will you take to implement participation proposals such as these?Residents of Cambridge don't generally need government assistance to participate in the civic life of Cambridge. Vibrant streets and neighborhoods usually exist where there is a high proportion of long- term residents, kids that go to the same school, the sharing of common resources or interests, and memorable characters and natural leaders in the mix of neighbors. The role of government is and properly should be minimal.
When it is not possible to hold an elected official's feet to the fire to represent area residents, we often look to neighborhood associations to serve this function. However, neighborhood associations often are poor representations of the residents of an area. For this reason, they must be viewed as advisory in nature. Increased use of city funds for these associations should be approached cautiously and should require proof of outreach to all residents of an area lest taxpayer money be used to engage in partisan politics.
I would propose the expanded use of unbiased and well-designed neighborhood surveys to ascertain where residents really stand on important issues. This would have been very helpful in advising elected officials in such issues as last year's supermarket fiasco in Cambridgeport.
Would you support using city funds to finance four papers that would serve all 13 of the city's neighborhoods, based on the North Cambridge News model?
I am uncomfortable with the idea of government funding of the press or any arrangement where editorial control would be controlled by a government-established group.
I would propose a cooperative arrangement with an established newspaper such as the Cambridge Chronicle to produce monthly sections focusing on particular parts of the City, divided by the four principal Zip Codes, and produced on a rotating basis. These supplements would be jointly written by neighborhood writers and Chronicle staff. The supplements published along with the regular paper would be available separate from the Chronicle for free or very low cost distribution in each featured neighborhood. It would be an appropriate use of city funds to do assist in this distribution.
What are your plans for reducing traffic congestion in Cambridge?I support safer accommodation of bicycles wherever possible on the streets of Cambridge. I fully support Cambridge's Vehicle Trip Reduction Ordinance (VTRO) and support current efforts to amend Cambridge's contribution to the State Implementation Plan to the Clean Air Act by substituting the VTRO for the Interim Parking Freeze.
Relieving congestion as an end in itself is not always the right policy. Wider roads can simply add volume and produce added congestion on other roads. In some instances, congestion encourages the use of public transportation.
Perhaps we should distinguish between congestion during prime commuting hours (which can make public transportation the more attractive option), and congestion in general (which can still serve to "calm" traffic as long as it's not too aggravating). I favor better organization of traffic rather than relieving congestion as an end in itself.
How would you propose to improve air quality and what is your position on the parking freeze?Air quality improvement is most affected by a change in the culture of the city. We need to have more residents living where they work and working where they live. I believe that the largest negative effect on air quality in Cambridge during the time I've lived here (over 17 years) has been the dramatic expansion of commercial buildings in Boston.
Another inescapable fact is that more affluence has brought more cars. I believe that as long as gasoline is relatively cheap, dependence on automobiles will be the rule and that stricter laws will have a relatively minor effect when compared to the economics.
I believe that limits on parking must be done on a more regional basis and that it makes little sense to pit one city against each other in the competition to attract and retain job-producing businesses with no net positive effect on air quality. This is why I prefer the Vehicle Trip Reduction Ordinance with a focus on incentives rather than the unilateral restrictions in the current Interim Parking Freeze.
What is your position on the Charles River Crossing now planned for the Central Artery Project?The current plan was not my choice. I have followed the issue from the beginning, including joining in tours of the impacted area by former Transportation Secretary Fred Salvucci. I preferred the bridge/tunnel design and was surprised when the all-bridge design was named as the preferred alternative. I don't believe that the case was made for this being superior in terms of cost, impact, or construction timetable. Though I feel that we have to be ready to negotiate our best deal should the all-bridge design move forward, I believe that the city should continue pressing the current legal challenges. Above all, I wish that all parties would be more honest about the entire Artery Project, including the Mass Highway Department and all the environmental advocacy groups. Trading falsehoods is not a good way to conduct public process.
Many Central Square area residents perceive their neighborhood as crime ridden. As a councillor, you will soon be meeting a new police commissioner. What will you be saying to our new commissioner with regard to law enforcement in the city? What is your evaluation of the effectiveness of the enforcement effort in the neighborhoods of Central Square?Though I support a zero-tolerance policy regarding all forms of crime against people and property, I do not believe that more police officers with greater firepower will cause a significant reduction in crime. This is a societal problem with contributing factors such as broken families, poverty, the anonymity of a transient population, the lack of organized recreational activity and jobs for the young people, and a culture that sends the message that anything goes.
The best way to deter crime is to populate the streets with citizens who respect the rule of law and who know each other as friends and neighbors. This is at the core of the whole idea of community policing and I hope that our new police commissioner understands this and continues in its implementation.
Any search for a new police commissioner should involve at least a Northeast regional search. Though I am sure there are some excellent candidates within the department, it would be a very unwise move to restrict the search only to candidates from within the department.
What are your thoughts on affirmative action?I support affirmative action and deplore racial and other quotas in hiring. Aggressive recruitment of candidates from groups that have been and remain economically disadvantaged makes good sense as public policy. Support structures to retain such employees is also good policy. Setting strict quotas is, on the other hand, demoralizing to all employees. I do not agree with recent decisions of the School Committee that seem to be moving in the direction of hiring quotas.
Any thoughts on the Cambridge Public Schools?Educational matters are personally and professionally very important to me, especially the quality teaching of mathematics and science. I currently teach mathematics at Harvard University and have taught summer programs for minority high school students in six separate summers, four summers with incoming minority students at MIT and two summers with Boston-area minority students in a pre-engineering program. I was in charge of the mathematics component in five of those six summers. I have been teaching mathematics at the college level for 21 years.
Though it is not the role of a city councillor to influence school policy, I do find the size of the School Department budget to be a problem. It seems to me that they have a very serious management problem. Perhaps it is a willingness to fund everybody's pet program. Maybe it's the inability to negotiate contracts. Maybe it's just political patronage run amuck. Whatever the reason, it is time they started managing their affairs with the taxpayer in mind.
What are your priorities regarding support for the arts?I support adequate funding for the arts but insist that better financial management, better judgment, and greater participation from people of all walks of life should be the rule with the Cambridge Arts Council. I believe that the City should encourage more public celebrations and events in our parks, including music, dance, theater, and free movies in the summer.