Background:
Now fifty years old, Craig has seen enough of the world to know that Cambridge is the place he and his wife, Hope, want to live and where they want to raise their two boys, Robbie (16) and Cooper (13). The quiet, friendly neighborhoods, dynamic schools, bustling shopping areas, wonderful parks, super libraries and great people have earned Cambridge a special place in Craig's heart. Born in Wellesley, Craig went to the University of Rochester on a NROTC scholarship, where he made Dean's list, received a BA in History and won the NROTC leadership award. After college, Craig served in the Marine Corps for four and a half years, seeing such faraway places as the Southern California desert, the Philippines and Malaysia. It was during these travels, that Craig first became interested in environmental issues, realizing that reducing abject poverty would decrease the likelihood of military conflict in developing nations. Less than four weeks after resigning his Marine Corps commission, Craig was knocking on doors for Greenpeace.

From Greenpeace, Craig moved on to Boston College Law School, where he served as Chair of the Environmental Law Society. Craig graduated cum laude in 1993 and earned the Susan B. Desmaris award for Public Service Achievement and Leadership for his work on environmental issues at school.

Following law school, Craig became an environmental consultant, married Hope (whom he met while she was biking with a cast on her leg) and, eventually, moved from a Porter Square apartment to a small house in North Cambridge. He served as the Chair or Vice-chair of the North Cambridge Stabilization Committee from 1996 to 2005, wrote the environmental grant that resulted in the founding of Alewife Neighbors, Inc. and played a major part in revitalizing the Sierra Club's Boston Inner City Outings program. He has served in various leadership positions for the local chapter of the Sierra Club, was on the Baldwin school’s School Advisory Council from 2004-2012, chaired the City Council’s traffic subcommittee for six years and currently chairs both the Veterans and the Public Safety subcommittees.

Craig is an avid cyclist (he was The Ride's September, 2005 "Supercommuter of the Month.") and is the author of an environmental thriller and an environmental textbook.  He is a trained asbestos assessor and is qualified in hazardous material response operations.

Top Priorities:
1st Priority: City Government, from the Councilors down, must do a better job of listening to area residents. On virtually any issue, the people who live in an area will know more about what works, or doesn't work, there than anyone at City Hall.  From the dog parks and public toilets to traffic calming and zoning changes, it is crucial that the City and the City Council involve local residents in ongoing, transparent and honest discussion.  For me, this involvement is reflected in my constant attendance at neighborhood meetings, my continuous outreach on local issues via email and facebook and, perhaps most importantly, my continued (and sole) refusal to take on a City-financed personal assistant.  When people communicate with me, they are communicating directly with me, not through a political appointee.  This direct and constant communication allows me to better understand what the people of Cambridge think about issues and allows the general public to better understand my positions.

2nd Priority: Cambridge Public Schools must be improved to the point where everyone is willing to send their kids to our public schools. Far too many families are selling their Cambridge homes and moving to Belmont, Arlington, Brookline and Newton. As a result, our both our City and our public schools are becoming less economically diverse. This is not an issue that rests solely with the School Department, though. CPS only has our children six hours a day, 180 days a year. The rest of us- to include the public libraries, the Department of Human Services Programs, large landlords, the Police Department and the regular public- must also learn to work together to create an environment where all of our children learn to value and benefit from a public education.

3rd Priority: Managing the growth of the City budget and not overextending long-term debt are crucial to keeping tax payments as low as possible. Despite large increases in Cambridge's budget in the past several years, our traffic and parking problems are still horrendous, many of our neighborhoods are feeling squeezed by over-development and our schools continue to have far too many students who fail to meet their academic potential. The Council, the City Manager and the School Committee cannot continue to spend money (in some cases, like our aggressive school construction program, vast amounts of money) without a clearer understanding and explanation of how those expenditures will make Cambridge a better place to live, work and visit. If we need to increase funding for programs, it should be done in a thoughtful manner that furthers a better understanding of what we are getting for our money.

Quality of Life and Public Safety:
Cambridge must revisit the models of development and service provision that it has used in the past. We need to do a better job ensuring that future development is more organic to existing neighborhoods and does not overwhelm the infrastructure of our streets and sewer systems. Police officers should become a more integral and frequently seen neighborhood presence. City agencies need to look at problems, such as rodents and noise, not as individual complaints but as systemic problems that we need to tackle in a new way, with extra emphasis on education and enforcement. In my fifth term, I will continue to work to:

• Implement community policing and develop strong community/CPD relations
• Propose and support zoning changes to mitigate development pressures and quality of life challenges.

Traffic, Parking, and Transportation:
Residents increasingly find it difficult to park near their homes, while the lack of effective traffic enforcement makes walking or cycling around Cambridge far too dangerous. In my fifth term, I will continue to push hard for the Cambridge Police Department to view traffic enforcement as one of its prime responsibilities and to develop and implement a comprehensive traffic management plan and to make relevant data readily available to the public. I will continue to urge my fellow Councilors to lead by example, by biking or taking public transit to City Hall instead of parking in the reserved spaces behind the building.

Municipal Finance, City Budget, Assessments, and Property Taxes:
Managing the growth of the City budget and not overextending long-term debt are crucial to keeping tax payments as low as possible. Despite large increases in Cambridge's budget in the past several years, our traffic and parking problems are still horrendous, many of our neighborhoods are feeling squeezed by over-development and our schools continue to have far too many students who fail to meet their academic potential. The Council, the City Manager and the School Committee cannot continue to spend money (in some cases, like our aggressive school construction program, vast amounts of money) without a clearer understanding and explanation of how those expenditures will make Cambridge a better place to live, work and visit. If we need to increase funding for programs, it should be done in a thoughtful manner that furthers a better understanding of what we are getting for our money.

Government and Elections:
Cambridge as a City and we as Councilors need to value input from and interaction with our residents and citizens, even if we don't always get feedback with which we agree. We should not have personal aides, as that money could be far better spent on other things. More information, such as traffic enforcement statistics, should be comprehensively posted on the City's website to allow residents to do their own analysis of how their government is doing.

Land Use, Planning, Economic Development:
As the Chair of my local neighborhood group, I saw firsthand how neighborhoods get squeezed by a variety of development forces. All too often, these development forces, whether they are municipal or commercial, have professional engineers, consultants and other hired experts to push their agendas while the local residents simply have their personal experiences and common sense. Unfortunately, the City pays far too little attention to the valuable information these local residents bring to the table.

The City must listen to its residents. The people who live in our neighborhoods know more about traffic patterns parking problems, density issues and how important the local Laundromat is than any panel of City-hired experts.

Cambridge residents know that people will bike around town when it really is safe to do so, not simply because the City painted some lines on a few roads. Locals know that large housing developments make it tougher to find parking on nearby streets unless we find creative ways to have density without bringing in new cars.

The City should also explore other types of housing and transportation options than what is currently pushed on our zoning codes. Allowing denser development if a project's residents are not allowed on-street parking stickers is a possible option, recently adopted by MIT and also followed by Harvard in one of its student dormitory projects.

Most of all, I will try, as hard as I can, to make my peers understand that our neighborhoods are fragile and the City must support them in every way it possibly can.

Human Services Programs:
Cambridge's youth programs are very segregated by race, class and age. I would like to see the various human service program, from library programs to youth programs to after-school programs to senior citizen programs designed and implemented in such a way that the diverse population of Cambridge actually funnels through these programs. The DHSP is reviewing how it provides services to youth, but the whole City needs to become much more aggressive in implementing strong mentoring programs, effective early literacy programs and successful job training programs.

Open Space, Parks, and Recreation:
Cambridge is a very small place. Our parks are used by a lot of people and we need to work harder to make our common spaces work for everyone, to include dog-owners, people who don't like dogs, organized team sports, pick-up team sports and a myriad of other different, often competing uses. Rules for using common space need to be clear and to make sense, and they also need to be enforced so that people can go to parks and playgrounds with a reasonable understanding of what to expect, and not expect, there. When designing parks, the City needs to make sure it does its best to incorporate neighborhood suggestions, and it needs to make sure it answers residents questions before any final decisions are made. Open space should not be used as a land bank to allow future development.

Energy, the Environment, and Public Health:
With only 6.2 square miles of land, Cambridge is a city where even the smallest things can have a huge impact on our immediate environment and our public health. We need a City government that can competently address these concerns.

The City's open space is not "free." Whether it is a park or a community garden, our green space is precious and must be valued accordingly in any city decision. Once this land is built on - be it for housing, health care or educational uses- it will never be available as open space again. The City must give this open space the value it warrants.

When it comes to traffic, it is important that we minimize the exhaust from cars and trucks idling at our intersections and clogging our streets. First and foremost, we must get people out of their cars, making alternative or public transportation a more attractive alternative to the people who live and work in our town. The City Council could set a wonderful example by eliminating its own reserved parking spots behind City Hall. Once our elected officials start relying on mass transit or biking toe meetings, it seems very likely we'll see an improvement in transit service and safer roads and sidewalks for all of us.

We all must also remember that Cambridge is a City with a very industrial history. Working with others, I helped obtain tens of thousands of dollars to help monitor remediation work at the contaminated W.R. Grace site in North Cambridge. Alongside other neighborhood advocates, against the will of the City, I helped prove that not only was the Grace site contaminated with asbestos, but so was nearby City-owned playing fields. As a result of this discovery, and lots of hard work by the neighborhood and former Councilor Triantafillou, Cambridge now has an asbestos protection ordinance that will help minimize the public's exposure to this dangerous fiber.

Housing:
Cambridge needs a comprehensive affordable-housing policy. In fact, it needs a Comprehensive Housing policy, period. Without a substantive housing policy, and a substantive affordable housing policy, it is impossible to determine if Cambridge is actually meeting its goals in these areas.

Few things are as important as providing housing for Cambridge residents who can't afford it. But there is a limit, financially, to what the City can do and without any sort of formal policy in this regard, it is not possible to decide whether the City is spending its housing resources wisely. The city must do a better job of ensuring that government-subsidized housing is also decent, desirable housing, not simply housing of last resort. Affordable units, to include limited equity condos purchased with City assistance, should be scattered across the City in ones, twos and threes, not concentrated in economically segregated areas.

Further, while the City can only do so much to provide affordable housing, it can, and should, do a much better job of making sure the inhabitants of our affordable housing units receive an education that will, in future years, allow them to compete successfully for high-paying jobs and market rate housing. This is goal that can only be met if all sectors of our City work together to help create the sort of environment that supports and values education at all levels.

As your Councilor, I will continue to work to:

• Set specific, measurable affordable-housing goals and create policies that avoid economic and social segregation
• Develop a clear, balanced affordable-housing policy that promotes appropriate siting, respects neighborhood zoning, and restores growth policies, land-use planning, and public interest as considerations (rather than the current approach - "As much as possible, as dense as possible" - favored by the City).

Arts and Public Celebrations:
Cambridge's 1% for public art program is a good idea, enhancing the public's general visual experience around town. Larger festivals help draw attention to Cambridge's many strengths. What the City needs to get better at is turning these events into true community building events, where people get to know each other and then learn to knit each other into the fabric of their respective communities. Parties where people come, have a good time and then leave without some future step having been planned or future relationships created will do little to create sustainable communities.

And the Foundry Building in East Cambridge should become a model for housing neighborhood-based non-profit and arts organizations.

University Relations:
Cambridge owes much of its current status to the abundance of fine colleges and universities within its borders. MIT and Harvard are two of the City's largest employers and both, along with Lesley and other schools, offer a variety of amenities to all Cambridge residents, are massive direct contributors to our tax and jobs bases and are crucial cogs in the regional economic engine.

That being said, the power of these universities to change our City with their massive development plans is very intimidating. Whether it be Harvard wanting to build on the Charles River or Lesley planning to expand in Porter Square or MIT rethinking the future of the Kendall Square area, far too many parts of Cambridge face disquieting university expansion challenges. While there is no perfect solution, the City should continue to work on getting universities to be taxed as the corporations they essentially are. When it comes to constructing dorms or research labs, local universities are more like well-funded developers than they are benign non-profits and the relevant planning discussion should consider them as such. Land owned by, or coveted by, these universities should be zoned to protect local neighborhoods just as if any other developer were interesting in building there and variances should be granted over community opposition only with great care.

Interagency 'favors' should continue as is. For example, the universities provide assistant teachers for our schools. Cambridge allows street closures for university events. This arrangement is not exactly a quid pro quo, but simply a reflection of the belief that everyone, and everything, co-exists in Cambridge and we all should do our best to accommodate and help each other. These positive aspects of Cambridge's relationship with its universities should continue even as we explore ways to ensure that these institutions of higher learning are fulfilling their own civic responsibilities.

Civic Participation:
City Council Service is a Privilege. City Councilors must recognize that they serve the public. Councilors cannot, ever, take the public for granted. City Council meetings often start late, Councilors frequently chat or leave the chambers during public comment, and Councilors rarely seem to attend an entire public meeting where they can hear the general public explain their views. As a Councilor, I will continue to:

• Pay attention during the Council's Public Comment period
• Work to create more representative Public Boards and Committees
• Support Citizen efforts to get prompt and complete responses from City Hall

For starters, participation on City Boards and Committees should be expanded beyond the current core group from which the City Manager has traditionally picked members. The long-term effect of the City Manager's close control over Board appointments is that the general public has begun to view these public forums as uneven contests between developers and impacted neighborhoods.

A second, and very easy, thing the City Council should do is to follow its rules without the constant suspensions for Late Orders, extended speaking opportunities or missed votes.  And the Council should start televising its meetings at the advertised start time, showing the empty chamber if a quorum has not arrived at City Hall in time to start promptly. And while the public is speaking, the Councilors should be in their seats, paying attention, not in the room next door eating dinner. Few things discourage civic participation more than taking the time to go to City Hall to speak at a Council meeting only to find just one or two, if that many, of the Councilors are paying the slightest attention to what the public is saying.

Finally, and perhaps most important, the City Council and all City officials should avoid using harsh or hurtful language in public. Insulting or belittling citizens who are simply voicing their opinions is harmful to the public dialogue. Opinions can, and should, be expressed clearly, but there is no need to be offensive when doing so.

Cambridge Public Schools:
A Good School System is the Heart of a Healthy City
As anyone concerned about the Cambridge Public School system understands, we need to ensure that the much-touted "Excellent Education in Every Classroom" is a reality in every school. To that end, we need clearly defined, quantifiable, and well-designed goals, plus effective supervision and adequate funding.

The plan for excellent education must be more than simply merging or closing schools and extending the school day.

My wife, Hope, and I have been happy with virtually every aspect of our children's public school education thus far, (we have 11th and 8th grade boys), but it is clear that many students, perhaps most especially those in the middle school grades, need the Cambridge Public School system to challenge them more. It is equally clear that many other CPS students are not succeeding academically. This "performance gap" threatens to overwhelm our schools and needs immediate attention through a planning process that is based on sound educational policies, effective classroom management and school climate programs and appropriate teacher and staff training and support.

WE MUST

• Focus on classroom behavior/school climate with a system-wide program that trains teachers, parents, students and others on appropriate behavior in and out of school.
• Develop better working partnerships between CPS and City agencies, to include landlords, non-profits and the City Council. Our schools only have our kids 6 hours a day for 180 days- it's up to the rest of us the rest of the time to help develop an environment and personal skills that will make their education a success.
• Put more emphasis on literacy programs, especially early literacy programs. Too many children come to school far behind where they should be in terms of literacy.
• Systematically survey exiting parents and other families who 'opt-out' of the Public Schools. The results of these surveys would allow CPS officials to better determine where staffing and budget changes must be met to keep more families in our schools.
• Engage lower-performing students and their families in the academic environment. The importance of motivating students to excel in the classroom cannot be overstated, yet too many students, for a variety of reasons, fall by the academic wayside. CPS, and all of Cambridge, must develop and fund new ways to help these children achieve the academic success, which is such a crucial foundation for their success in later life.
• Identify where the Cambridge Public School system is spending its money. At its heart, what our schools do is allowed or limited by how much money they can spend. Yet, since virtually no one understands how our public school system spends its money now, it is impossible to figure out how to spend it more wisely in the future.

AS CITY COUNCILLOR, I WILL CONTINUE TO
Bring my first-hand knowledge of the Cambridge Public Schools, as a Public School parent and active member of the school community, to the City Council. When the City Council gets involved in Public School issues, as it must when passing school-related budgets, issuing loan orders for school construction projects or making zoning changes that impact who is likely to live in Cambridge and where, it needs a member who understands the impact of the Council's actions on the education of our children.

Work to ensure that the City Council passes a budget that provides our Public Schools with the funds they need to educate our children to reach their highest personal potentials.

Promote healthy neighborhoods, through zoning reform, appropriate affordable housing creation and child-friendly streets--neighborhoods that will support a vibrant school system.

Craig Kelley 2013 Candidate Profile - Cambridge Chronicle

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