Should the Cambridge City Manager be Rehired?
Bob Reports.
1. Cambridge City Council deciding on whether to rehire the Cambridge City Manager.
2. General Statement on the City Manager’s Record.
3. Destruction of Natural Resources.
4. Starvation of the Charles River White Geese.
5. Private humans step in to feed the Charles River White Geese.
6. Cambridge City Manager unfit.
1. Cambridge City Council deciding on whether to rehire the Cambridge City Manager.
Yesterday evening, February 22, 2006, the Cambridge City Council conducted a public hearing, off-TV camera, on whether the Cambridge City Manager should be rehired. As I understand it, a decision to rehire must be taken six months before expiration of his contract. The deadline is the end of this month.
To me, the decision is a no-brainer. The following is an elaboration of my comments:
2. General Statement on the City Manager’s Record.
No matter how highly qualified a person is, sufficiently serious unacceptable behavior should disqualify that person for the position.
There is no question that Cambridge City Manager Robert Healy does a great financial job.
Trouble is, however, that his environmental record on matters solely within the jurisdiction of the City of Cambridge is striking bad.
Environmental performance on matters which ANYBODY can do is typically excellent. Performance on matters which ANYBODY can do is used as a shell game to hide the routine destruction of the Cambridge Environment.
3. Destruction of Natural Resources.
You put the Cambridge City Manager to work on parks and the first thing that gets done is trees get destroyed. There are all sorts of lovely excuses. What is altogether too consistent is the destructiveness.
Squirrel Brand, Brattle Square, City Hall Front Lawn, Inman Square, the plaza at Porter Station, the Marie Avenue tot lot, Dana Park – I could go on and on and on.
The real outrages are Alewife and the Charles River. Alewife is about as pristine an environmental location as can be imagined in a major city such as Cambridge and the Charles River is, in its own way, as good as Alewife.
The manager is proposing to destroy the Alewife reservation to put in massive storage tanks for flood protection that could and should be created under a parking lot next to a railway line several hundred feet south of the Alewife reservation.
The outrages which have already been done on the Charles, as bad as they are, are only beginning.
Hundreds of trees are slated to be destroyed between the Longfellow Bridge and Magazine Beach as part of the straightening out of Memorial Drive.
Memorial Drive is being straightened out and parking removed to facilitate relocation of the Allston-Cambridge Mass. Pike (I-90) off ramp to Memorial Drive.
Memorial Drive is being straightened out and parking removed to facilite reconstruction of Storrow Drive across the river.
4. Starvation of the Charles River White Geese.
The City Manager is heartlessly starving the Charles River White Geese. Since September 2004, he has barred them from all their food for their 25 years residency on the Charles River.
East of the BU Bridge across from the Hyatt Hotel is a lovely riverbank with luscious grass on which the Charles River White Geese happily munched until 2004. The City Manager finished a sewer project in that area in September 2004. When he left, he left a wall at the shore line barring the Charles River White Geese from feeding on that luscious grass.
West of the BU Bridge, the City Manager and the MDC/DCR have destroyed wetlands which were shared between nature and humans for more than 50 years. They destroyed all the native vegetation.
They dumped in fill and introduced vegetation which has no business on the Charles River. They have put up real walls like those across from the Hyatt and they have put up real walls that you have to think over a bit. The introduced vegetation creates its own wall.
This work rather clearly violates the MDC/DCR’s own supposed Charles River Master Plan which calls for a meadow to the water. The introduced vegetation creates a wall barring in people who use Magazine Beach from the Charles River. The wall violates yet another supposed part of the Charles River Master Plan which calls for water-related uses, not for water-barring uses.
The combination of efforts blocks the Charles River White Geese from all food in their 25-year habitat.
5. Private humans step in to feed the Charles River White Geese.
For 18 months, human beings have been forced to save the Charles River White Geese from this outrage, importing food to keep them alive.
These are beautiful, valuable, generally loved beings. They are major assets to the City of Cambridge and the Charles River.
The last thing which should be happening is their deliberate starvation by local governments.
6. Cambridge City Manager unfit.
This heartless, destructive behavior, this starvation attack on beautiful, valuable, living beings, clearly makes the Cambridge City Manager unfit to associate with decent people.
Somebody who is unfit to associate with decent people has no business working in a major position with the City of Cambridge let alone as the city’s leader.
There is no way the Cambridge City Manager should be rehired.
