Candidates Questionnaire - Bob Le Tremouille

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?

Answer:

Cambridge’s public works policies and practices are outrageously destructive of our environment and wasteful of public resources including the tax money used to proceed on these irresponsible initiatives.

It is silly to describe Cambridge’s environmental expenditures as other than a feeding trough for the powerful contractor/developer lobby.

The extreme example is Magazine Beach. Contractors are being paid to destroy native vegetation, irreplacable wetlands, five trees and an animal habitat which has been shared by animals and humans for the better part of a century. They are ruthlessly, heartless and cruelly starving the most valuable tourist attraction in the area, the 25 year resident Charles River White Geese.

Magazine Beach is being walled off from the Charles River and its animals with a bizarre wall of introduced greens which have nothing to do with the Charles River but plenty to do with contractor profits.

Five trees have been replaced with a stupid artificial puddle feet from the Charles River.

Phase two will pay contractors to dig up the rest of the Magazine Beach playing fields and replace them with playing fields.

Wetlands are being replaced with sprinklers.

Routinely, mature, valuable trees are destroyed in Cambridge environmental projects to replace them with saplings.

Contractors are paid to destroy the trees and the rest of the environment. Contractors are paid to install saplings and silly gold plating to replace environmental destruction which should not have been done in the first place.

Contractors make big buck on make work. The environment is destroyed and taxes are wasted.

More than 449 to 660 trees are being destroyed on Memorial Drive. They are in part being replaced with saplings, and the developer/contractor brags that it will look lovely in 40 years. The other part will be highways and grass, plus introduced vegetation which has no business on the Charles River.

The bird sanctuary on City Hall front lawn was destroyed. We went from a 24 hour 365 day chorus of bird song to a bare expanse of grass. Trees were destroyed. Vines were destroyed. Shrubs were destroyed.

A 20 year old woods was destroyed in Vellucci Park in Inman Square ("too thick") and replaced with a barren plaza.

A grove of 8 to 12 four story high trees at Squirrel Brand was destroyed to be replaced with grass. ("wrong pedigree").

An entire block of Clark Street including 9 mature, beautiful trees are slated to be destroyed in the Harvard Street Park project.

8 to 12 20 year old, maturing trees were destroyed in Brattle Square to be replaced with 8 to 12 saplings.

A perfect good and quaint cobble stone street at Palmer Street in Harvard Square is being torn up to replace it with brick. A book store is being driven out of business.

A new median is being placed on Mount Auburn Street by the Lampoon building. This will relocate traffic, moving westward traffic going to Brattle Street from Harvard Square. The traffic will be moved to the heart of Harvard Square with the corresponding damage to air quality.

The Alewife reservation is being flooded because the city "can’t afford" $3 million to handle water needs correctly. The city is too busy wasting environmental moneys on environmental destruction as contractor welfare.

A new tax for Cambridge open space as part of "community preservation" funds is being spent buying open space in Lincoln, MA.

My fight to prevent environmental destruction on the Charles River has generated more communications to the Cambridge City Council than any other issue this Millenium.

Nine city councilors have gone from private to public destruction on the Charles River which they "explain" with the Silence of the Scoundrels."

The solution is to fire the Cambridge City Manager and replace at least five of the nine environmentally bankrupt incumbent City Councilors.

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

A. I have been involved in transportation planning and regulation since the 70's.

In the short run, Cambridge first and foremost must respect the physical safety of law abiding citizens by enforcing its traffic laws.

It should be possible for pedestrians to be able to cross one way streets without having good reason to fear being run down by wrong way vehicle operators.

It should be possible for pedestrians and other members of the traveling community to be able to cross streets on walk lights and green lights without having to worry about blatantly lawless vehicles which will not obey traffic signals.

Our sidewalks should be safe havens for pedestrians. Pedestrians should not have their lives placed in jeopardy of being killed or their bodies maimed by silent vehicles traveling within inches of unsuspecting human bodies.

B. Long term solutions are based on development policies and on regional policies.

(A) The development policies of the City of Cambridge are bizarre.

I have 30 years experience in the field of regulating development in Cambridge with major success.

I have had major zoning victories despite opposition by the City Manager’s friends:

I have three successful downzoning petitions for 80% of Mass Ave between Harvard and Central Squares, for a more residential and environmentally responsible city. He provided meaningful protection for neighborhood businesses.

I have the successful downzoning of A.D. Little site in Alewife Reservation in N. Cambridge which is being implemented by the return of a large parking lot to the reservation.

I have had successful downzoning petitions for Green Street, Maple Avenue, Fayette Street, Youville/Cambridge Hospital, Lesley College/Harvard Law School, first block of Mt. Auburn Street, Harvard Houses district.

I have removed the Planning Board’s unlimited variance powers for larger buildings.

I have reversed provisions allowing commercial garages in residential districts.

I have protected neighborhoods on Mass. Ave. in Mid-Cambridge/Riverside, on Cambridge Street/Inman Square-East Cambridge, River Street, Trader Joe’s site, Mt. Auburn Street, Broadway, Western Ave., Blanchard Road.

I have repeatedly killed destructive city manager initiatives.

The last few years have seen contractor/developer dominance of development policies in which "protective" zoning routinely has had undisclosed fine print which turn the "protections" into lies.

The city manager is aggressively fighting to destroy as much first floor housing and first floor open space as he can get away with and replace it with much more traffic generating uses.

The city manager is aggressively fighting for as much commercial development as he get away with and could care less about Cambridge’s ability to absorb that development.

Cambridge has twice the jobs we can use for our population. Cambridge is only one of two communities in the state (Plymouth is the other) which do not have strict, population related limits on liquor licenses. Our numbers are better than twice what they should be.

Retail generates nine times the traffic as residential uses. Offices generate three times the traffic of residential uses.

We need reasonably scaled housing and open space, and not more commercial construction in areas which should have housing and open space.

Neighborhood type business cannot compete with regional liquor based businesses. We need to join the rest of the state in our business regulation policies.

So we get massive traffic for uses which are really inappropriate and destructive.

The development policies must be reversed and I am working to do so.

(B) On regional matters, Cambridge should be using its influence on regional transportation policies insofar as they impact Cambridge. Cambridge is using its influence in the wrong direction.

(1) We have an exit from the Mass. Pike being constructed to Cambridgeport on the railroad bridge under the BU Bridge. It is aimed at eventually replacing the current Mass. Pike exit in Allston because Harvard owns those exit ramps and wants to build on them.

Instead of fighting this irresponsible plan, Cambridge is one of the key actors.

The ongoing massive destruction of trees on Memorial Drive with close coordination with Cambridge is designed to straighten out Memorial Drive to handle the traffic from the off ramp.

The destruction at Magazine Beach is part of the package. A planned roadway under the BU Bridge from Magazine Beach to the off ramp is part of the package.

Future plans would connect the off ramp to Memorial Drive by destroying hundreds of trees between the rail bridge and the BU Boathouse.

The vast majority of trees across from the Hyatt between the BU Boathouse and the Memorial Drive split are slated for destruction.

Cambridge is currently building a roadway behind the Ford plant to connect Brookline Street to this off ramp. The roadway under construction runs a few feet from the rail right of way.

(2) The MBTA has turned planning for the inner ring transit line into a highway project.

Part of the "bus" plans would ease Harvard’s new Mass. Pike off ramp by tarring over railroad tracks abutting Cambridgeport. The MBTA has shown how the rail bridge can be connected to Kendall Square by a highway on top of those railroad tracks. This should not be allowed in whole or in part.

Cambridge should be pushing the MBTA to go forward with the Urban Ring rapid transit line in a responsible configuration as real rapid transit not with the silly (and contractor popular) bus plans.

This rapid transit line would run from the Orange Line in Charlestown to the Orange Line at Ruggles by way of Lechmere, Kendall, MIT and the Harvard Medical Area.

There are two possible crossings of the Charles, one near the BU Bridge, the other (following on idea I initiated would run near the Mass. Ave. Bridge.

The City Manager and destructive city councilors are pushing for the BU Bridge crossing with an full scale subway stop on Putnam Ave. Bizarre, of benefit to Cambridge developers and BU.

The alternative would make excellent transportation sense with a new station between Kenmore and Fenway Park providing excellent rail and green line connections far superior to the City Manager’s destructive BU Bridge crossing. I have worked on this planning since the mid-80's.

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

I want the City Manger fired and would expect a replacement to take proper recognition of employee interests.

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?

Cambridge is overloaded with jobs at the expense of housing. We have twice the jobs we should have for our housing stock.

People want to live near their work so they drive up the prices of our far too small stock of housing for jobs. This massive overload of jobs is the most important reason for the lack of affordability of our housing stock.

We need housing. We do not need more jobs.

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. General.

We need to seriously consider whether Cambridge with its limited size can afford to be home to two major and expanding universities.

Harvard’s expansion plans in Allston and Watertown take some pressure off Cambridge.

MIT has no such plans. MIT’s massive "commercial" expansion is readily convertible to tax exempt uses.

MIT should be encouraged instead to look at the south coast of Massachusetts for its expansion.

B. Threat to elderly housing.

A very major part of Harvard expansion, however, threatens the elderly housing at 2 Mt. Auburn Street, on the edge of Harvard Square.

I have previously protected the first blocks of Mount Auburn Street in my East Harvard Square downzoning.

The City Manager / Harvard Riverside zoning changes of 2003 are more destructive to the Charles River and the Kerry Corner neighborhood than they need to have been, but that is lost.

What can be saved, however, is that elderly housing.

The key is a massive garage being constructed on nearby Cowperthwaite Street, in part to allow Harvard conversion of the elderly housing to campus purposes.

Key is fine print in parking requirements designed to give the campuses flexibility in parking, but that fine print is not intended to reward expansion of the campus outside institutional districts at the expense of the elderly. The fine print should be corrected.

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

A. General.

The depths to which nine city councilors and the city manager have sunk are amply demonstrated by the heartless, deliberate starvation of the twenty-five year resident Charles River White Geese. This is ongoing with the bizarre Magazine Beach project and bizarre aspects of the sewer project across from the Hyatt.

The two top priorities to make Cambridge an environmentally responsible city have to be to replace the city manager and to replace a majority of members of the Cambridge City Council.

Contempt for and destruction of the environment within the exclusive powers of the City of Cambridge is endemic among all nine city councilors and the City of Cambridge.

Lovely words about environmental protections and claimed concerns on environmental matters which are outside the exclusive responsibility of the City of Cambridge are smoke screens designs to lie to the voters about the abandonment of environmental responsibility by nine city councilors and the City of Cambridge on those matters within the exclusive control of the City of Cambridge.

Massive destruction of irreplaceable public resources is environmentally reprehensible.

I have gone into great detail on these matters above.

At the same time, I have spent 30 years protecting our environment with a series of successful zoning initiatives in the most political explosive parts of our city.

I have replaced commercial zones with housing zones with meaningful open space around the housing.

I will continue to do so by working to replace a striking series of irresponsible upzonings passed in recent years destroying open space around buildings and wiping out meaningful zoning protections at the whim of city manager appointees.

B. Two specific city manager initiatives are currently of great concern.

(1) The city manager is fighting to be allowed to authorize buildings near Alewife Brook Parkway which could be 50% denser and larger or more than is allowed in Harvard Square.

This part of an irresponsible zoning package that includes Western Concord Avenue and the Alewife Station area as well, and includes rail bridges connecting Alewife Station to Concord Avenue.

The bridges should not be constructed.

The western part of Concord Avenue is across from Cambridge’s largest park. It abuts the successfully, Residence B zoned Cambridge Highlands neighborhood and the comparable residential neighborhoods of Belmont.

The zoning for outer Concord Avenue should be Residence B to fit in with that open space and with these successful residential neighborhoods. Residence B is the most common residential zoning in the west and north of Cambridge.

The shopping centers should be zoned neighborhood business, Residence C-2B which includes medium density housing with strict 45 foot height limits. This is the zoning I got for the Inn and Harvard and for perhaps half of Mass. Ave. between Harvard and Central Squares.

The undeveloped portion of the Alewife Station area west of the station and north of the railroad tracks should be rezoned Residence C-2B to provided needed housing at intermediate density and a transition between the Residence B I propose for Concord Avenue and the existing fairly tall buildings in the Alewife Station area.

(2) The city manager’s initiative to allow retail between Harvard University and Porter Square WITHOUT counting against FAR is destructive to first floor housing and open space must be defeated.

Particularly endangered is the plaza at Porter Station. Irresponsibly destructive of badly needed open space.

Massive destruction of a viable, valuable first floor housing would be automatic and should be defeated.

This city manager initiative should not pass and another reason why the city manager should be fired.

The neighborhood Three Aces business block is of particular concern to me because I have had major influence in saving it to date.

My Everett - Mellen - Wendell downzoning of 1978 has helped protect this block. I think further downzoning of the area for greater, responsible protection makes appropriate sense.

C. I have mentioned elsewhere a number of other matters of concern to me in development regulation.

Robert J. La Trémouille
Post Office Box 391412
Cambridge, MA 02139-0015