1. Cambridge Chronicle report.
2. General Analysis.
a. Reality in the City of Cambridge, MA, USA.
b. Starvation Wall at Magazine Beach.
c. BU Bridge to the Longfellow Bridge.
(1) Charles River White Geese.
(2) Nesting Area of the Charles River White Geese.
(3) Highway proposal.
(4) Mass. Pike Off Ramp.
(5) Railroad to Boston University’s Cambridge Boat House.
(6) Hundreds of trees and animal habitat being destroyed on Memorial Drive.
(7) Longfellow Bridge.
(8) Memorial Drive / Longfellow Bridge.
d. Grand Junction Bike Highway.
e. Underpasses.
f. Cambridge Common.
g. Fresh Pond.
h. Alewife.
i. Flat out lies — example: Urban Ring.
3. Analysis.
1. Cambridge Chronicle report.
The Cambridge Chronicle is reporting on line on the budget for the Cambridge Development Department. I am looking at http://cambridge.wickedlocal.com/article/20150528/NEWS/150526979?utm_source=newsletter-20150529&utm_medium=email&utm_term=view_as_webpage&utm_campaign=newsletter.
Here is their summary of the development department budget. It says a lot.
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What it was last year: $6,335,440
Total city budget: $545,870,875
Percentage of total city budget: 1.35%
Department by the numbers: CDD will hire a net zero associate planner, a housing associate planner and interns to assist with housing, economic development and the department’s website. The fiscal 2016 budget also includes $75,000 for a Grand Junction consultant and $50,000 for an urban design consultant.
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2. General Analysis.
a. Reality in the City of Cambridge, MA, USA.
This one exhibit from the fraudulent propaganda piece currently in Cambridge City Hall says everything about how vile the City of Cambridge and its City Council are
I will follow with items under serious consideration, approved by a unanimous city council or cleared with the Development Department and the reprehensible City Council does not want to know what is going on.
b. Starvation Wall at Magazine Beach.
The Cambridge City Council walled off the playing fields at Magazine Beach.
The key state manager has publicly bragged that this starves the Charles River White Geese by keeping them away from their food. Before and then after.
This is a full grown woman standing in the only opening. That opening can be seen in the second photo above, taken from the Boston side.
The DCR’s glorified Charles River Master Plan brags of intent to kill or drive away all resident animals.
Cambridge and friends destroyed the excellent grass in the Magazine Beach playing fields and replaced it with sickly stuff that requires poisons to survive. To drain off the poisons they installed an expensive drainage system to drain off poisons to keep alive sickly introduced grasses which should not be in there in the first place.
The current fraud is fighting to keep the poisons and the deliberate starvation, to expand the poisons to the top of the hill west of the playing fields and to the wetlands behind the swimming pool, plus destroy the little guy’s parking lot and to put in a highway which is part of the excuse for massive tree destruction supported by the State House.
And, of course, the most important thing about the current fraud is the lie that they are defending the Charles River, so don’t look at all of the outrages, not just at Magazine Beach.
The flat out lies used to obtain this outrage included the lie that they were provided a “lawn to the river”, and the non stop lie of no “intention to harm” the Charles River White Geese.
Oh, and here is a photo of the little guys’ parking lot just west of the playing fields (and across from Magazine Street) they are fighting to destroy.
c. BU Bridge to the Longfellow Bridge.
(1) Charles River White Geese.
Heartless abuse, deliberate starvation. Total habitat probably destroyed as part of the 2014 State House vote.
(2) Nesting Area of the Charles River White Geese.
Entire area likely for casual destruction. An excellent example is the Muddy River project near Fenway Park where a park was casually destroyed to be “improved.”
(3) Highway proposal.
This magnificent tree above the nesting area is one of the hundreds being destroyed.
This is Cambridge's map of its planned, J shape highway, dominating the Destroyed Nesting Area.
(4) Mass. Pike Off Ramp.
Harvard bought its future medical school site promptly after the local transit authority (MBTA) demonstrated the Grand Junction railroad bridge (photo below) could be expanded to handle an off ramp from the Massachusetts Turnpike (I90) to Cambridge. In this photo, the green sign in the middle is over the Massachusetts Turnpike.
Multiple outrages prepare the Cambridge side of the Charles River to receive this ramp. The latest lie is a bike highway. The usual “explanation” occurs: the usual lie of omission. They brag of a Grand Junction bike highway and don’t mention the environmental destruction on the Charles River.
(5) Railroad to Boston University’s Cambridge Boat House.
For the time being, perhaps very short, the area between the railroad and the boat house is a wild area. Plans are to destroy every single tree.
I showed the tree above the Destroyed Nesting Area above.
This 105 tree grove will be decimated. Think of the outrage on the Cambridge Common. This plus massive destruction of much larger trees, plus the outrages
(7) Longfellow Bridge.
This excellent grove on top of the Kendall Square end was casually destroyed supposedly as part of the bridge renovation.
And I repeat, state agencies run plans past the development department. The difference between Cambridge and responsible communities is obvious.
(8) Memorial Drive / Longfellow Bridge.
Excellent trees, casually destroyed.
d. Grand Junction Bike Highway.
If Cambridge had a responsible government, the bike highway would stop one block north of Memorial Drive up Vassar Street to the east, and connect to Vassar Street and then to Memorial Drive. But Cambridge does not have a responsible government.
Here are photos of the responsible connector, from the railroad side, from close to it on the Vassar Street side, and from a position closer to Memorial Drive.
On this map, the responsible connector is to the left of the "G" in "Grand Junction." The connector on Vassar Street to Memorial Drive runs from the "G" to "Memorial".
e. Underpasses.
The fraudulently named Charles River “Conservancy” got support for “underpasses” under the next three bridges to the west of the BU Bridge, and seems to have lied to the legislature that this included support for the $20 million of massive destruction.
The Department of Transportation, responsible for these bridges, has called this outrage an outrage and a waste of money.
f. Cambridge Common.
Before.
After.
The Environmental Notification Form justified destruction on grounds that the trees (first photo) block the view of the monument readily visible in the second photo.
g. Fresh Pond.
Multiple year project to destroy animal habitat and replace it with gardens and the usual lie of “creating” animal habitat after it was destroyed.
h. Alewife.
3.4 acres destroyed, and bragged about.
This is Cambridge's publicity photo.
The trees in the background used to fill this entire area.
The cynical company union con game is a fake group which persuades people to do anything and everything except for what would work. The leader/creator of the fake group bragged about the destruction.
The Cambridge City Council has repeatedly, over many years, yelled at private developers developing nearby private property IN ACCORDANCE WITH MUNICIPALLY CREATED ZONING. The Cambridge City never mentions the municipally created zoning, nor does it mention its own outrageous destruction.
i. Flat out lies — example: Urban Ring.
Too many lies over too many years to count.
One excellent example is the proposal for an Urban Ring subway system connecting existing subway lines. Naturally, Cambridge wants the irresponsible alternative of two possible Charles River crossings. Cambridge lies that there is no other alternative under consideration. Cambridge's irresponsible proposal is the BU Bridge alternative.
In 1991, the MBTA adopted a second, responsible alternative, the Kenmore Crossing, which I proposed in 1986. The legislature has since subsidized the responsible alternative by subsidizing the rebuilding in place of Yawkey Station near Fenway Park. The BU Bridge crossing requires it to be moved.
Zoning along the Grand Junction was created in the early 2000s based on the lie that only Cambridge’s irresponsible alternative was under consideration.
Last I heard, a couple of years ago, the Development Department was still lying that the apparently victorious alternative, the Kenmore Crossing, does not exist, 20 years after it was made a formal alternative.
Maps of the “non existent” Kenmore crossing taken from MBTA plans, first on the Cambridge side, then on the Boston side.
The City Manager reaffirmed Cambridge's interest in the Urban Ring subway concept in his comments on the Environmental Notification Form for the South Station expansion project last year.
I have major zoning victories as an environmental tool. One big technical difference between my zoning initiatives and those written by the development department is that my zoning does what I say it does.
The existence of the fake groups and their real connection to the development department is just part of the corruption.
3. Analysis.
Key are the provisions for net zero and the Grand Junction consultant. They are on the opposite sides of the divide.
They will brag about the netzero, and neglect to mention the massive amounts of environmental destruction which goes through the reprehensible destruction.
If Cambridge had a responsible city government, the department would be flat budgeted with NetZero in place of the destructive planners creating the above outrages and acting as the go to for the fake “protective” groups who go to the development department to find out their opinions.
Since Cambridge does not have a responsible government and will not end the Grand Junction bike path by connecting to Vassar Street and to Memorial Drive by Vassar Street, an additional planner for the Grand Junction bike highway is destructive and should not be funded.
Change that funding to a decrease. Strip the department of the destructive planners doing these various outrages.
Actually, it would be a positive act to transfer city council related planning to the City Clerk, and possibly close down this vile department.
