On May 11, during an otherwise ordinary meeting of the Finance Committee to discuss the 2022 Cambridge budget, a dispute erupted between City Manager Louis A. DePasquale and Councilor Jivan G. Sobrinho-Wheeler, highlighting a common fault of conflict in Cambridge government.
Sobrinho-Wheeler suggested that, for the 2023 budget, the city conduct âtransparentâ and âmore engagingâ hearings with a longer timeline. He cited Bostonâs public working sessions, which allow the budget to change âaccording to the wills of the elected body.â
âI have to respond to that,â DePasquale interjected.
âThis is a city manager form of government, and as much as the council sometimes feels it isnât, it is,â DePasquale said. âYou either work with the city managerâs position, or you remove it and go to a different function, but you canât change the government that you have.â
A new affordable housing proposal has ignited debate over the role of single-family homes in Cambridge.
Titled the âMissing Middle Housing Petition,â the proposal is sponsored by the affordable housing nonprofit A Better Cambridge and the Boston Sunrise Movement, and calls for zoning changes to allow for the construction of more multi-family âmiddle housing,â or four-plexes, triple-deckers, and townhouses. Over the last week, the petition has been met with mixed responses from City Councilors and residents.
At an April 8 Ordinance Committee meeting, the City Council voted to keep the petition in committee pending further review and feedback from the Community Development Department, the cityâs planning agency.
Cambridge Chief Public Health Officer Claude Jacob said local vaccination efforts remain hampered by supply shortages, despite federally run sites having recently received more doses.
Jacob presented the update during the weekly Covid-19 pandemic response at a meeting of the city council Monday.
The state has recently increased supply to mass vaccination sites, such as the Hynes Convention Center in Boston, in order to bolster rollout, according to Jacob.
“The vaccine supply coming into the Commonwealth continues to increase, with much of the additional supply going to federally run programs at the area pharmacies and the FEMA program that’s anchored at the Hynes Convention Center,” Jacob said.
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Cambridge City Council advanced a zoning amendment for the Alewife neighborhood to the next round of consideration and received yet another update on the Covid-19 vaccine rollout at Monday s meeting.
The Council passed a motion 6-3 to bring the zoning petition to a second reading, awaiting a final vote on March 15. The petition proposes the development of 490 units of affordable housing and $17 million in funding toward a new bridge with an accompanying shuttle service for the area.
Petition sponsor Councilor Marc C. McGovern said current zoning laws in Alewife should be changed to accommodate new housing and neighborhood improvements.
âA lot of the things that we are talking about are community benefits: housing, the bridge, additional open space, reduction in parking, retail â none of those things are required under current zoning,â McGovern said. âAt the end of the day, I have to decide and we have to decide what we think is the better outcome for the city a