The City Manager's Fall Update

I can hardly believe it’s been a year since my first day! I’m incredibly grateful to the Mayor, Vice Mayor, City Councilors, City leaders and staff, and so many in the community who I’ve gotten to work with over the last twelve months. I have felt the weight and demands of this job, but I have also continued to have a deep appreciation and respect for the role. I have worked hard to find consensus within the City Council, to follow their direction, to balance the many voices in our diverse community, and to bring forward the professional experience and expertise of City department leaders and staff.

One of my goals has been to bring greater transparency to our City and to help everyone understand what we are working on and how decisions are made. I provided an initial 90-day update in December 2022 and a Spring update in April 2023. In this Fall update, I’m excited to highlight some of the major areas of work over the last six months.

FY24 Budget

The City’s FY24 Budget was submitted in May, discussed across two and a half days of public hearings, and adopted in June. I’m thankful to Councilors Nolan and Carlone for their leadership as co-chairs of the Finance Committee and to David Kale, our Assistant City Manager of Finance who retired this past July after a long career in public service. David guided me through my first budget cycle and, over the last year, helped me understand the City’s complex financials. He has been a steady hand and has left the City in a strong financial position and with the ability to continue to invest in our collective priorities.

Over the years, our budget document has become increasingly detailed and transparent, including dollars spent across priority areas, key initiative descriptions, data and trends, and long-term capital plans. Our FY24 budget reflects that continued practice and I encourage everyone who wants to better understand the City to engage with this document.

The FY24 budget reflects the Council’s priorities, and we have made significant commitments across these major areas: 1. Affordable housing continues to be one of our highest priorities. We have allocated $46 million in FY24, including $41 million into the Affordable Housing Trust. We have a lot more work to do to address high housing costs and we are making unprecedented contributions, with our annual financial commitment more than tripling over the last decade. 2.

Supporting our unhoused community continues to be an important priority. The City has allocated $16 million across homelessness and housing stability. In FY24, we added $2.8 million in new funding to maintain our shelter capacity coming out of the pandemic. Providing support to our unhoused while maintaining thriving city squares continues to be a focus across city departments. 3. Universal pre-kindergarten (UPK) represents the largest new financial investment across FY24 and FY25.

The application and matching process for the City’s UPK program will begin this year with classes beginning in Fall 2024 that would offer all four-year-olds and prioritized three-year-olds high-quality pre-school programs. 4. We are facing a global climate crisis and Cambridge is rising to meet it. We have allocated $18 million in FY24 toward reducing building emissions, vehicle electrification, and investments in renewable energy with significant City ordinances and programs rolling out this year. 5.

Finally, making our streets safer for all is a key priority for the City. We continue to invest in our urban infrastructure to repair damaged roads, improve accessibility, address dangerous intersections, and expand protected bike lanes. This year, the City made adjustments to the budget process to increase transparency and engagement with the Council. The City worked closely with the City Council Finance Committee Co-Chairs and held several public hearings prior to budget submission.

We also engaged in substantive discussions on the budget and the City Council made formal requests for budget increases for affordable housing and for the public health department. The City worked to meet these requests and built in additional funding in the final adopted FY24 budget. I believe this collaborative approach is a good foundation for us to build on and continue.

An area where we need to improve is developing greater community input into our budget process. We already have a robust participatory budget program and I’m excited about expanding this as we enter our tenth year. We will also explore ways to bring greater community engagement into the overall FY25 budget process and will look forward to sharing more.

Climate Change

Climate change is the fight of our generation. Warnings from scientists are only getting more dire and 2023 is likely to be the hottest year on record, driving extreme weather events both around the world and very close to home. The transformation we need is not going to be easy and we are facing a massive restructuring of our economy, energy production, and infrastructure.

The last five months have seen us grapple with climate action as a city. How do we set aggressive goals and policies while mapping a realistic path that is achievable for our businesses and residents? How do we act on a ten-year plan while recognizing that science and technology are rapidly evolving? And how do we balance the difficult trade-offs that we will have to make as a community?

I’m proud of where we have landed together and this has been an incredibly productive City Council term. We have adopted climate-resilient zoning that builds efficiency standards and protections against future heat and flooding into our building codes. We have amended our Building Energy Use and Disclosure Ordinance (BEUDO) to include a 2035 net zero target for large commercial buildings that represent the largest portion of our carbon footprint.

And we are on track to participate in the state’s Fossil Fuel Free pilot which would eliminate fossil fuel installations for new construction and major renovations with limited exemptions. These ordinances were vigorously debated, and I have seen us bring together diverse voices into the conversation, rely on our hard-working staff and expert opinions, and make compromises and adjustments while staying true to our ambitious goals.

The city also continues to build programs to support our residents and businesses through this transition, especially with the new regulations we have passed. The City has launched Electrify Cambridge, a new program that provides no-cost technical consultation to residents on clean and green home energy upgrades such as heat pumps, solar panels, and induction stoves.