Candidates Questionnaire - Henrietta Davis

1. Many residents feel that their property taxes are too high, and that because of this they cannot afford to buy a house or rent an apartment to stay in Cambridge. How can we make sure that property taxes keep the city affordable while providing the city with the tax base it needs?

--Aggressively pursue energy efficiency so money is not spent unnecessarily

--Maintain tight control on the budget, realizing that cuts may mean loss of services and loss of employees. Look for efficiencies.

--Introduce home rule petitions to make taxes more predictable

2. How can we make public transportation better in Cambridge and what can the City Council do to encourage residents to use public transportation?

--As Chair of the Council's Traffic and Transportation Committee I have worked for years on ways to support use of transit such as clearing of snow from bus stops, buying streetlights so residents feel safer walking at night from the T. Also I promoted adding benches around the city. We should have schedules at every bus stop and I will continue to advocate for that.

3. What can the city do to make sure that future negotiations with the city’s unions are fair to workers?

--City Councillors may not negotiate with unions by law. However we can set standards for how employees are treated, for example when the domestic partnership ordinance was adopted all employees with partners were eligible for health insurance.

4. Cambridge is one of the centers of high-tech innovation in the country. What can the City Council do to encourage innovation and take advantage of new technology while keeping the city affordable for its residents?

--I'm promoting WIFI installation to the greatest extent possible across the city.

--We should have high tech city operation. I've introduced an order to establish a committee on how the city evaluates and adopts new technology in its operations

--We need to support the new green technology (environmental) sector that is developing here. Operations such as Greenfuel and PlanetTran need to be celebrated by the city at events such as the Go Green Business awards. I testified to support the introduction of hybrid cars to the taxi fleet by PlanetTran.

5. What will you do to take advantage of the unique educational resources provided by the Cambridge’s universities while preventing university development that threatens working families?

--A co chair of the University Community Committee, I worked with other committee members to define five areas to work with the universities: Housing, Payment in Lieu of Tax, Environmental Efforts, Education and Development. We have joint efforts going on the environment though there is more potential there. I support the vigorous effort for the universities to get us world class science education to increase opportunities for Cambridge kids. We need to pursue more housing efforts with the universities, especially to house their non-academic staff. Development is the hardest issue and requires constant diligence, negotiations over zoning and other responses to increased development. The pilot was recently re-negotiated and increased

6. What can City Council do to ensure that future development is not environmentally harmful?

66% of our ciy's harmful carbon dioxide emissions come from non-residential energy use. I introduced the city policy making all our new buildings environmentally friendly, green buildings setting an example for other new construction. I also introduced an order to require the city to buy 20% of its energy from renewable sources. In addition, I'm advocating that NSTAR offer renewable energy on its

bills, something they have refused to do to date. I also shepherded the Tree Ordinance to passage, protecting large trees at development sites. I would like to see bonuses for green development.

Henrietta Davis
henridavis@aol.com