Fighting yet another upzoning

Bob La Trémouille reports:

1. Introduction.
2. Record of your editor.
3. Latest City Manager Initiative - General.
4. What the Cambridge City Manager is trying to destroy.
5. Excellent example of the good guys in action - the Inn at Harvard in East Harvard Square.
6. Further protections of the environment and neighbors achieved and under attack.
7. The Cambridge City Manager on the attack.
8. Destruction details, Cambridge Street in East Cambridge, Mass. Ave. in North Cambridge, general destruction of protections.
9. Goals of the good guys.

1. Introduction.

I have more than 30 years experience defending the environment in Cambridge. Most of it has been in the field of zoning, a field in which individuals who know what they are doing can have major successes and I have those successes.

The danger, as usual, is with the Uncle Tom organizations, the company unions. They have done a lot of damage.

In the last few days, I submitted a proposal for an oped piece to the Cambridge Chronicle. I will convert it with little change into a letter of objection to the Cambridge City Council.

The following is my email to the Cambridge Chronicle without edit except to add section headings. As I recall, the prior editor was quite pleased when I put my imputs onto this blog. I anticipate and hope that the current editor feels the same way. I am very encouraged by the behavior of the current editor.

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2. Record of your editor.

Editor
Cambridge Chronicle

The following is offered as an oped piece with the following information offered about the author. Clearly, the description is much longer than you might wish, but this gives you an opportunity to pick and choose should you wish the material.

Robert J. La Trémouille is an attorney with a law office located between Harvard and Central Square on Mass. Ave. near Cambridge City Hall. Over the past 30 years, he has been active in environmental protection matters in the City of Cambridge with major successes. He has opposed many initiatives of the City Manager and his staff. He has defeated quite a few of them and has major victories of his own.

La Trémouille has written zoning changes that have passed that have downzoned more than 80% of Massachusetts Avenue between Harvard and Central Squares. These changes mandated the provision of meaningful open space around new buildings and protected existing trees and vegetation there in many other parts of the city. His zoning required housing in most of that part of Mass. Ave. The changes restricted building size and height.

He has written zoning which saved the Three Aces building north of Harvard Law. His zoning forced the return to open space of a large parking lot near Alewife Station. His zoning forced Harvard to build the Inn at Harvard in East Harvard Square as it stands rather than 72% larger built out to the sidewalk. He has increased protections on Cambridge Street, Prospect Street, Western Avenue, River Street and in various other neighborhood districts in the city.

In the recent past, he has repeatedly stood up against environmental destruction on the Charles River, at Fresh Pond and in nearly every open space project managed by the city manager in recent years. He has defended the last habitats of free animals in Cambridge. He has opposed trees, wetlands and animal habitat needlessly being destroyed.

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3. Latest City Manager Initiative - General.

The City Manager and his friends are off “improving” Cambridge again in a zoning petition expanding his already very destructive “special permit” powers.

Trouble is that, behind the lovely words, the City Manager’s tastes are commonly exactly the opposite of those of the people of the City of Cambridge. The manager just does not tell people. The manager uses very deceptive tactics to keep people from knowing that what he is doing is exactly the opposite of what Cambridge residents wish.

4. What the Cambridge City Manager is trying to destroy.

The latest citywide upzoning in front of the City Council fits the mold very well. The city manager says he’s protecting space required around buildings called “yards.” The city manager even provides two paragraphs “protecting” yards. Once again, “special permit” powers would be given to his appointees which greatly expand destructiveness possible in the city’s zoning and which take back the supposed yard protections.

The normal situation is that the very destructive appointees of the Cambridge Manager use the “special permit” powers to destroy “yard” requirements. That makes “yard requirements” just so much more nonsense when they are attached to the city manager’s “special permits.”

5. Excellent example of the good guys in action - the Inn at Harvard in East Harvard Square.

An excellent example what the City Manager’s people hold in contempt and are trying to destroy is the zoning which created the Inn at Harvard located in East Harvard Square at Mass. Ave. and Harvard Street.

This building is easily the most popular relatively new building in Harvard Square among normal human beings. This is because it has grass, because it has trees between it and the sidewalk, and because, as a result of the grass and the trees, the Inn at Harvard is environmentally responsible.

The City Manager opposed the key provisions which forced those yards and that grass on Harvard, exactly the attributes of the Inn at Harvard normal people cherish. The city manager’s friends refer to areas created by meaningful yard requirements as “underutilized” with a delicate shudder.

I, along with 7 members the City Council (an 8th vote was in the hospital) and a strong neighborhood group, forced the Inn at Harvard on the City Manager and on Harvard University over both their objections. That was the Natalie Ward Zoning Petition.

6. Further protections of the environment and neighbors achieved and under attack.

Construction of the Inn at Harvard destroyed valuable trees. 9 years after my victory in Harvard Square, with the support of 8 members of the City Council and with a different, strong neighborhood group, we cleaned up those problems. We required meaningful open space around buildings and provided special, meaningful protections for neighbors. We wiped out provisions rewarding tree destruction by requiring new buildings not only to have open space around them but by also prohibiting construction underground in the areas where open space is required. This was the Anderson Zoning Petition.

The petitioners filed the Anderson petition in response to destructive zoning initiatives by the City Manager. We defeated his initiatives. The city council asked us for our proposal. We gave our proposal. The city council passed it. Support was so strong that the city council ever rejected an attempt at compromise we offered. By rejecting our attempt at compromise, the City Council gave us more than we finally asked for.

We accomplished our objectives with a bang. The most obvious part of the petition protected Mass. Ave. between Harvard and Central Squares. It was quite deliberate, however, that we protected Cambridge Street in East Cambridge, and Inman Square. It was quite deliberate that we protected parts of Prospect Street, Bishop Allen Drive, Western Avenue, River Street, Memorial Drive, Blanchard Road, Concord Avenue, Broadway, Fresh Pond Parkway, and Huron Avenue.

7. The Cambridge City Manager on the attack.

It is no surprise whatsoever that the City Manager is attacking these very real yard protections which we established and trying to destroy our very real protection for neighbors with yet more “special permits.” “Special permits” destroy protections and do harm to neighborhood quality.

The people of the City of Cambridge did not elect our City Council to destroy protection after protection after protection.

The most important thing in the mind of the City Manager’s lobby is taxes, taxes, taxes. It does not matter that projects can be done responsibly, with open space benefits on all sides of buildings for the benefit of all. The city manager’s initiatives have no use for open space except where the developer lobby can make bucks off it.

8. Destruction details, Cambridge Street in East Cambridge, Mass. Ave. in North Cambridge, general destruction of protections.

Cambridge Street in East Cambridge should not be a wall of buildings right out to the sidewalk. Mass. Ave. in North Cambridge should not be a wall of buildings right out to the sidewalk. Our neighborhoods should not be threatened with buildings overwhelming our neighborhoods at the whim of people appointed by the City Manager.

Cambridge should have meaningful zoning, not special permits which routinely wipe out protections we are told are guaranteed to us.

The open space provided by the Inn at Harvard zoning and by other zoning requirements can and should be provided. Requirements for meaningful open space around buildings should not be destroyed in undisclosed fine print in zoning proposals which claim to be doing the opposite of what they really are doing.

9. Goals of the good guys.

If the city council wants to vote in the yard protections in the latest city manager package, great.

If the city council wants to extend the flexibility to destroy even more zoning protections that is in the main part of the City Manager’s latest package, shame on them.

Report from Magazine Beach

Bob La Trémouille reports:

1. The White Geese continue their boycot.
2. Plans of the sick pols at Magazine Beach.
3. The chief bragger, Charles River Conservancy.
4. Impact on the White Ducks, danger of Freeze.
5. Initiative of the Cambridge City Council - Yet more fake environmental groups.
6. Summary.

1. The White Geese continue their boycot.

Yesterday, December 30, I saw the Charles River White Geese and I was at Magazine Beach.

I saw them from the Boston side of the river. They had left the Destroyed Nesting Area and were going East, in a flotilla, exploring.

They seem to be very, very, very spooked by their sense of the truly sick thing coming at Magazine Beach. Since they stopped coming to Magazine Beach, I have not seen them in the Charles next to it at all, and definitely not on Magazine Beach.

The sick plans of the Cambridge City Council and of the state bureaucrats would be appear to be sensed by them so strongly, and be so offensive to them.

2. Plans of the sick pols at Magazine Beach.

These reprehensible people, solely as make work for their contractor friends, are getting ready to dig up all the dirt in the Magazine Beach playing fields, except the bizarre project at the edge of the Charles which exactly conflicts with their stated goals for the Charles River.

Once they are done carting away the dirt, they will cart dirt back, plus poisons, plus sprinklers.

The poisons will be inserted to drive away insects which have been no problem in the 50 years the fields have been in existence. The sprinklers will be inserted to replace the wetlands they so irresponsibly destroyed.

The bizarre wall of designer bushes for which they heartless starved free animals for two years and counting walls off the Charles from animals and from SWIMMING, also these reprehensible people started off this outrate in 2004 with a swim bragging about (and lying about) their plans for Magazine Beach.

3. The chief bragger, Charles River Conservancy.

The chief bragger in 2004 joined in the swim, the head of the sickos at the Charles River Conservancy. These are the people who have poisoned every goose egg they could get away with in the first ten miles of the Charles River every year since 2003. We raised sufficient hell that they stopped their sick attacks against the eggs of the Charles River White Geese in 2005. Besides they were proudly starving them by them.

This sick entity, on behalf of the state bureaucrats,runs arounds destroyed the native vegetation protecting free animals on the Charles AND BRAGS ABOUT IT.

At one point Senator Kennedy's office stepped in to help their egg poisoning.

4. Impact on the White Ducks, danger of Freeze.

The Charles River White Ducks could be the big loser in the current round of reprehensible behavior.

The CRC Sickos have destroyed protective vegetation right up to the core habitat of the Charles River White Ducks on the Boston side.

They need to get out of the Charles River. Yesterday morning, the Bumpy Memorial Goose Pond at Magazine Beach had a thin sheet of ice. The Charles will freeze one of these days, and the White Ducks need to be out of the water by the freeze.

Trouble is that, when the White Ducks arrived on Saturday, July 22 of this year, they were beautiful innocents.

The Charles River Urban Wilds Initiative taught them to swim in the Charles on the following Wednesday and they have gleefully been living on the Charles ever since.

I would anticipate that, like the Charles River White Ducks, they have their winter coats to protect them, but, like the fact that they did not know the Charles River was for swimming, they do not know that the Charles River freezes.

Bill Naumann of CRUWI has done and continues to do an excellent job keeping an eye on them, and I am confident he will continue to do so. I am confident that he is concerned and I share his concern.

5. Initiative of the Cambridge City Council - Yet more fake environmental groups.

One of the favorite techniques of the developer owned city government in Cambridge is Uncle Tom organizations, company unions.

These give the false impression that public input is normal in Cambridge, but are designed to prevent public input insofar as is possible. These organizations can be used for meaningful input, and I have used them for meaningful input. The key is to make such a strong case that the good guys will not swallow the nonsense being put out by the bad guys.

But it should not be that way.

The key type of organization to worry about nowadays loudly and FALSELY claims to be green.

They loudly proclaim their concern for fancy light bulbs, but cannot understand the problem with government destruction of hundreds or thousands or trees and cannot understand the problem with poisoning land owned by the city or state.

In shortly, they blatantly lie with their choice of names, but they go ahead anyway.

6. Summary.

I am hoping, but we are dealing with a truly reprehensible situation which does a lot of lying.