Motions around affordable housing and health bump up an approved $1B budget for Cambridge
Auburn Court in Cambridgeport got Affordable Housing Trust funding in 1996, 2000 and 2017. (Photo: Affordable Housing Trust)
Cambridge passed an $884 million operating budget Monday with discussions focused on putting more money into affordable housing and, to a lesser degree, public health staffing and facilities. There was also a digression into the ShotSpotter gunshot surveillance system used by police.
The city entered the budget process last month with a proposed operating budget of $881.8 million for the 2024 fiscal year, which starts July 1. That’s a 7.1 percent increase from the current budget that appears to be a 10 percent increase because of a bookkeeping change.
What was approved by city councillors Monday was $883,773,885. With a series of loan orders, the city has total budget of a cool $1 billion.
Even so, “this doesn’t have everything we want,” Finance Committee co-chair Patty Nolan said. “This does take a huge step for universal pre-K. It does have a substantial funding increase for services for the unhoused. It has an enormous budget for the entire school department. And it does substantially increase a number of the initiatives that we’ve worked on over time and adds a lot of new positions. It’s certainly something that is quite impressive.”
A couple of things worked out on the floor Monday were signaled in May budget hearings: calls to add money to the Affordable Housing Trust to help ease a housing crisis by buying or building affordable units; and to keep public health staff after hearing rumors of several cut positions.
The Cambridge Health Alliance has agreed to preserve “at least” four positions at the Cambridge Public Health Department, which it runs, in return for the extra $416,000 approved Monday. The city’s total payment to the Alliance for running the department in the coming fiscal year will be $8.3 million. A call to address the run-down Windsor Street Clinic – one of three buildings the city leases to CHA, and which it is supposed to maintain – was “very favorably” received by city staff, City Manager Yi-An Huang said, but needed an assessment and a broader conversation.
Affordable housing
On affordable housing, there were two requests: to increase the trust’s budget by $1.6 million, proportionate with the 7.1 percent increase of the overall city budget; and to put in another $20 million from free cash “outside of the FY24 budget,” leading to a three-year plan to raise trust funding to 10 percent of the overall city budget.
Huang rolled with the first request, noting that the increase excluded funds directed by the Community Preservation Act Committee – though that body reliably gives the maximum 80 percent allowed to affordable housing and the minimum required to historic preservation and open space, or 10 percent each.
The second request for a one-time free cash appropriation and three-year plan brought hesitation. That 10 percent would total around $80 million, Huang said, and the city is now putting around $40 million annually into affordable housing – “a significant contribution, certainly compared to other communities that are neighboring us,” and up significantly from the recent past.
“Without really thinking about all the other competing priorities that we have as a city, it feels like we’re not ready to do that as part of the 2024 budget. I’d really recommend that we have the conversation over the summer or fall,” Huang said, “as part of overall goal setting.”
The $20 million wasn’t being asked for this budget cycle, councillor E. Denise Simmons reminded Huang, and wasn’t new – it was actually part of long-standing council requests that “says we are serious” about housing.
Approval on three motions
Some councillors argued that having the money ready to be spent in the trust made for easier decisions about buying property for affordable uses when opportunities arose; Huang noted that the trust already held some $150 million, of which about half was committed, and additional spending could outpace the ability of the city to get state and federal funds that can be leveraged for construction.
In the end, the $1.6 million and 7.1 percent budget increase was approved unanimously by the council. The $20 million increase from free cash, outside the 2024 fiscal year budget, passed 5-4, with the “yes” votes including Simmons, councillors Burhan Azeem, Marc McGovern and Quinton Zondervan and Mayor Sumbul Siddiqui. The “no” votes were Nolan and councillors Dennis Carlone and Paul Toner with vice mayor Alanna Mallon.
The three-year plan to increase the trust budget also passed, 6-3. The “yes” votes included Azeem, Mallon, McGovern, Simmons, Zondervan and Siddiqui. The “no” votes were by Carlone, Nolan and Toner.
ShotSpotter funding
The call to end ShotSpotter funding in the budget came from Zondervan, who encountered a problem: There was no ShotSpotter funding in the budget, Huang noted.
Zondervan said he was aware it was grant funded, and “the request is to discontinue using that funding to deploy this technology.”
Another problem: No such Urban Area Security Initiative grant money has been accepted this year or for several years, departing head of finance David Kale said, advising that the council could just reject the grant when it arrives.
“Somehow this program is being operated,” Zondervan said. “The request is simply to stop operating it however you’re paying for it.”
Opposition to the gunfire-detection software isn’t limited to Zondervan. During public comment, Alex Marthews of the Boston civil liberties organization Digital Fourth called it an “intrusive” program focused on poor or more diverse areas of the city that does not reduce violent gun crime “and rarely produced evidence helpful to uncovering or prosecuting it.” Alerts in Cambridge have been false positives two-thirds of the time, and only seven arrests can be attributed to the technology over 6.5 years costing $325,000, he said.
No to a budget decrease
Since it wasn’t a budget item, Huang too suggested having the conversation at another time – but Zondervan said he had a motion to reduce the police department budget to $73 million, roughly the spending in the current fiscal year, rather than give the requested $78.4 million. He could bring forward an order to discontinue ShotSpotter separately, he said.
Other councillors said they were happy to have a police-spending conversation, including the possibility that dollar amounts could decrease in coming years as unarmed responders took over some duties. But there were objections to this being the moment.
“This has now turned into a conversation essentially about defunding the police department,” Toner said.
When the vote came on the reduction, only Zondervan and Siddiqui voted yes.
At a cost of $4,166 dollars a month and one arrest every 11 months ($46,421) ShotSpotter is far less expensive or “intrusive” than a single foot patrol.
And that’s 7 less people who think it is OK to use weapons in an illegal manner.
An excellent use of money which seemingly has zero impact on the things from a budget point-of-view.
And while Zondi and Siddi continue to signal the virtue of ponies for everyone, the rest of the council understand basic math.
When I talk to folks who live in Washington Elms and Newtowne Court in the Port, none of them have asked to stop Shotspotter nor to have fewer police.
The Mayor and Zondervan voting to defund our police is the most dangerous and I’ll thought out vote I’ve had the displeasure to witness in this city. It is completely disqualifying. Voters need to wake up.
Come on Patrick. We all know what’s going to happen in November. It is likely that fewer than 30% of registered voters will vote. However, Siddiqui and Zondervan will get their people to the polls.
Because Cambridge uses ranked choice, and because the city effectively has nine “at large”councillors, absolutely nothing will change. Zondervan will continue with his deplorable socialist rants, and Siddiqui will continue to lean more and more to the left. So the push, in so many ways, to provide less and less money for the police department will go on. The only way it is going to change is if, unfortunately, one of those unarmed responders gets hurt when answering a call concerning a problem.
On another matter, the 7.1% increase in the budget is just another step in what will shortly become a real financial problem for the city. The city is spending money on too many non- essential items. It is trying to make everyone feel good. This will be ruinous for the future. CRE development in Cambridge is slowing down substantially, but that fact hasn’t registered with the councillors. A slowdown in the increase in revenues, coupled with substantially increased expenditures, is a recipe for financial disaster. And the financial position for the last fiscal year (2022) was overstated by an accounting entry, but no one seems to read the footnotes in the balance sheet.
The city is in trouble in so many ways, but we can be sure that the new Council will be very much the same as we have now…only thinking of how much money it can spend today, and not thinking of the future health of the city.
“One year ago, the MacArthur Justice Center (MJC) published a study on the dangerous inaccuracy of ShotSpotter, a surveillance system that purports to detect the sounds and location of gunfire.
The study, which reviewed ShotSpotter deployments for roughly 21 months (from July 1, 2019, through April 14, 2021) using data obtained from the City of Chicago, found that 89% of ShotSpotter’s reports led police to find no gun-related crime and 86% turned up no crime at all, amounting to about 40,000 dead-end ShotSpotter deployments.
Since then, a tool that was once merely a note in a crime report has become the subject of widespread scrutiny and concern by academics, researchers, and the media. Activists are increasingly calling for the removal of ShotSpotter from cities and police departments, pointing to the high number of pointless and potentially dangerous police deployments and ties to racialized police tactics.
Every unfounded ShotSpotter deployment can lead to residents being stopped, detained and interrogated – often without them knowing why. This has a disproportionate impact on communities of color, particularly in Chicago where ShotSpotter technology has been exclusively deployed in the 12 districts with the highest proportion of Black and Latinx residents and the lowest proportion of white residents. On an average day, ShotSpotter sends police into these communities more than 61 times looking for gunfire in vain.
There have even been recent reports that ShotSpotter evidence leads to wrongful prosecutions, including that of Michael Williams of Chicago, who was falsely accused and jailed for nearly a year in 2021 largely on the basis of ShotSpotter evidence. When prosecutors eventually abandoned the ShotSpotter evidence they immediately dropped all charges. ShotSpotter, Inc. is also being sued, along with the City of Rochester, for malicious prosecution by a man who was acquitted of murder charges that were based on ShotSpotter reports.”
Source:
macarthurjustice.org/blog2/shotspotter-is-a-failure-whats-next/
Concerned,
Sadly you are correct. Zondervan and Siddiqui make Cambridge and specifically places like Central Sq a more dangerous place to live and work. They do so 100% for political reasons only.
Shot spotter is not part of the police budget; Siddiqui and Zondervan had no clue because they didn’t bother to ask. That is the hallmark of their governing style … skim the surface, do the least amount of work, and fire a salvo to get attention regardless of outcome.
We get what we vote for.
@unquietsoul
You said,
“This has a disproportionate impact on communities of color, particularly in Chicago where ShotSpotter technology has been exclusively deployed in the 12 districts with the highest proportion of Black and Latinx residents and the lowest proportion of white residents.”
Have you looked at the latest (for the last six months and before) of Black on Black shootings in those twelve districts, mostly by young Black males? Just horrible. And Chicago just got rid of a mayor who didn’t know how to slow this down, but is now at Harvard (The Kennedy School), telling students how to govern. What a joke.
Latinx. My friends want to be called Latino.
Spending money on housing for Cambridge residents who desperately need it should not be considered “non-essential.”
The City Manager’s original proposal for level funding for affordable housing was effectively a cut, particularly when inflation has substantially increased building costs.
“The study, which reviewed ShotSpotter deployments for roughly 21 months (from July 1, 2019, through April 14, 2021) using data obtained from the City of Chicago, found that 89% of ShotSpotter’s reports led police to find no gun-related crime and 86% turned up no crime at all, amounting to about 40,000 dead-end ShotSpotter deployments.”
So 11% did lead to a gun-related crime. That’s pretty good IMO!!
If we follow the logic of @unquietsoul then we should disband all fire stations because 98% of the trips the fire truck makes report having no fire. We should also remove all seat belt requirements from cars because 99.999% of the time the seat belt is engaged by the driver, it serves no value at all.
The Shot spotter technology exits in places because that is where the most shots are fired. Dont make this about race and color and minority BS. Speed traps exists where people speed. Fancy restaurants exists where there high spending level. Weed store exists where the demographics is right. If gunshots in that area stop, the technology will be removed.
Marc said is correct – no one in that area has complained about it, and no one in that area has asked for lower police presence.
It’s loonies like Zondervan who give liberals a bad rep.
@HelloCambridge
You said, “Spending money on housing for Cambridge residents who desperately need it should not be considered “non-essential.”
No one, and particularly me, said that spending money on housing for Cambridge residents who desperately need it, is non- essential. Why would you say something like that? Don’t you believe in accurately conveying what another person said? Or do you slant it to try to prove your point.
Money spent on affordable is what the city should be doing. Have you looked, in detail, at the city budget? Have you read the email sent out every day by the city, telling us what the city is doing. If you’ve read either (and it appears you haven’t), you would see that there are tens of millions of dollars spend unwisely. The councillors approve the budget and most seem “fat, dumb and happy.” They believe there is currently a lot of money available, and that it will never stop. But, as my grandmother said, “money doesn’t grow on trees.” The three key rating agencies reenforce the notion that all is well financially; the same rating agencies which said all was well in 2007 and the first half of 2008.
All is not well financially. I had one current councillor tell me that he couldn’t be bothered looking deeply into the finances of the city.
He said there were more important things on his agenda. Very sad.
Money is being spent on too much “fluff.” Call it what you will… fluff, non-essential items, fat…whatever. We need more affordable housing. Why aren’t we streamlining the budget so that there is more money for that. And while we’re at it, why don’t we make sure that we’re not spending $ 900,000 plus on affordable housing units (with probably still more cost overruns to come). In the vernacular “that is criminal.”
If you want to see what is going to happen to revenues, just look at one of the largest taxable entities in Cambridge, Boston Properties. Take a look at the material decline in the stock, and look at what management has to say. You know what that effectively represents? It reflects a large diminution of the value of the company’s buildings, soon to be reflected in a dramatic change in tax revenues from that source. And BXP is only one CRE operation.
Could I suggest that you speak with some of the current councillors, and ask them to take a minute (actually much more than a minute), and cut the non- essential items from the budget, so that money can be spent on where it is most needed.