One of my neighbors, Rhonda Massie, wrote a letter and asked me to post it as a part of this blog. Sorry for the delay Rhonda... finally here it is... thx...

On Monday, February 9th, I attended the Cambridge City Council meeting expecting to see democracy in action, and expecting that the community would get a fair hearing. To my surprise and amazement, however, this is what I saw and heard.

1. Unions. Several union leaders arrived with many rank and file members to back them up. Although most do not live in East Cambridge, and will therefore not be permanently affected by this development, they want the whole thing built, starting tomorrow. Apparently none of them took the time to think it through and realize that something will be built and there will be jobs, although with the state of the economy, and according to the fourth quarter report of the developer itself, not for many more tomorrows. What was at stake for the community, and up for a vote that night was a zoning change, not the go ahead for the project itself. While it is good for the union leaders to advocate for jobs, it would make me feel a lot better if they stopped to consider that what is built should be done right, and in a fair and equitable fashion for the community members who have to live with what is built long after the final brick is put in place, and the rank and file move on to other jobs.

The most cringe-worthy moment came when a union official had four young men stand at his side while he all but directly called them stupid in order to explain that not everyone goes to college, so we need trade jobs. I thought that attitude passed with Howard Gardner and his explanation of multiple intelligences, and a good carpenter needs to have great math skills, anyway.

2. Money. I was quite frankly surprised to hear that the vice presidents of the development firm, the architect, and the lawyer representing them all made donations to various councilors in recent months, some of them quite hefty, and one of which had to be given back because it was over the monetary limit on donations. A councilor tried to defend these contributions, saying that it was perfectly legal to give to a campaign fund, but as I have pointed out to him in a letter, the old cliché about Caesar's wife being above reproach holds here. The translation of this is " My wife should be as much free from suspicion of a crime as she is from crime itself". Legal, but suspect, what with the timing. If the zoning is changed, and these buildings built, the community will always look on the area as the best urban planning money can buy.

3. Taxes. The incentive of lower taxes was mentioned several times, and while I may be an anomaly, I don't mind paying my fair share of taxes if I feel that my money is spent well and wisely. When it is not, I do get very angry, as I did when the City purchased two properties in the East Cambridge area and paid over the assessed value for them. I don't know why this was, but I would have preferred more due diligence in setting a fair price and saving the tax payers some money. Another example of a waste of my taxes is legislators who took raises this year when the economy is in such a crisis and so many people are losing their jobs. If these raises had been turned down, maybe the money could have been spent elsewhere, like on health services, or unemployment benefits.

4. Change. Yes, I do have to admit that, especially as I get older, I don't favor change, but the practical side of me realizes that change will happen. What I don't like to see is City agencies allowing change mainly for purposes of monetary gain, without regard for the benefit of the community, which will have to live with these changes long after they take effect. Where developers see parking lots, I see open spaces where I can look at the sky without having to tip my head back and look straight up between tall buildings. Also, I see the possibility of open space for the benefit of the community in these paved lots. The lot across from the Athenaeum Building especially, where I spent a great deal of time envisioning an oval track with a small park in the middle. It would have been a great place for the local schools, and a wonderful place for the runners from the sports club in the Athenaeum Building during the wintry times when it is snowy and the sidewalks are all but impassable. By the way, this lot was apparently available during all of the meetings I attended where a top City official assured the audience that Cambridge would love to buy land for open space in East Cambridge, but there was nothing available.

Another change that I do not like to see is what will happen when the Orange Lab building is razed. The transformation of that building from a plain one story brick building into an award winning, innovative work space made me happy. That was change I could believe in. A fellow member of the East Cambridge Planning Team did remark to me that they are renters who took a chance and lost, and that is true, but the community will have lost something good when that building comes down.

5. ECAPS, or the Eastern Cambridge Planning Study. It has been mentioned many times in discussions of this project, but eight years ago the City funded a study of the area and came up with zoning guidelines. A large amount of money was expended, a collaboration of a diverse group of people worked on it - developers, architects, city employees, and community members. It was a compromise, no one group got everything they wanted, but it was supposed to be a plan for the next twenty years. It is disheartening for me to realize that all it takes is for one deep pocketed developer to come along for the City to toss carefully crafted planning aside. It is also interesting to note that in 2001 the ECAPS was awarded the Comprehensive Planning Award by the American Planning Association's Massachusetts Chapter. Goodbye ECAPS, we hardly knew you.

6. Dot Com Bust. Yes, bio-tech is the next big thing, but so was Dot Com a few short years ago. The City fell all over itself to approve a building with inadequate parking because it was going to be used as a Dot Com building, and very few people would ever need to step foot in it. Fast forward a few years and we have a brand new Police Station with inadequate parking, and lots more on street police parking than we could ever have imagined. Bio-tech is moving to the suburbs because land and rents are cheaper there. The pull of MIT may be a fallacy, as MIT has long maintained a tech lab in Bedford - Lincoln Lab. I hope we are not again putting all of our economic eggs in one basket, only to end up with many vacant buildings.

7. Politicians and Perceptions. The officials, elected and not, had a different view of the developers than the community members did. In contrast to all of the high praise I heard at this meeting about the willingness of the developer to please the community, I found the developers to be particularly intractable. At one point I asked if they would consider contacting the East Cambridge Open Space Trust (full disclosure, I am a trustee of that organization) to ask the Trust if they could help to work on the park and explore funding for it so that the developer would not have to bear the full financial burden and they could then build within the allowed limits. The answer, which was consistent with many of their other answers to the community’s concerns, was NO. My impression of the whole process was that they are willing to throw the community a small bone, a park which will serve to enhance their campus, and another park on a traffic island where it will be impractical to erect a building, but that they want to exploit the community to the maximum they can, no matter what it means to the community.

From talking to my family and my neighbors I know that many people are unwilling to attend Council meetings, or take part in the political process because they feel that the deck is stacked against the community members and the community itself. That was the sinking feeling that settled into the pit of my stomach on Monday night.