Marc McGovern
2013 Candidate for Cambridge City Council

Home address:
15 Pleasant St.
Cambridge, MA 02139

Contact information:
Tel: 617-642-1731
e-mail: marcmcgovern@gmail.com
website: www.marcmcgovern.com
Facebook: Marc McGovern Cambridge City Council

Send contributions to:
Committee to Elect Marc McGovern
17 Pleasant St.
Cambridge, MA 02139

June 25, 2013 - City Council candidate, Marc McGovern, announces the hiring of Annie Nagle as campaign manager. Annie has been involved in community issues both personally and professionally for many years, working with programs for inner city school children and children with incarcerated families. She received her J.D. from the University of Oklahoma where she was awarded the Joseph F. Rarick "Just Desserts" award. After moving from Oklahoma City to Boston, she became involved in professional community organizing. In 2012, she acted as Field Organizer in Cambridge for Elizabeth Warren's Senate Campaign and began consulting with Perkins School for the Blind on the National Deaf-Blind Equipment Distribution Program.

"I first met Annie when we were both working to help elect Elizabeth Warren. Annie's community organizing skills, work ethic and campaign experience make her a fantastic asset to the campaign. I'm thrilled that she decided to take on this role," said McGovern.

Annie will be working to pull together volunteers, develop a field plan, and organize events and other aspects of the campaign. "Cambridge is an amazing city; it's full of activism and intelligence. I'm thrilled to be working with Marc as a candidate. He's smart. He's dedicated. He's progressive. I genuinely believe he will make a wonderful city councilor."

For more information on how to help with the McGovern campaign, please visit www.marcmcgovern.com.

Thank you for taking the time to learn more about me and my campaign for Cambridge City Council.

I’m running for City Council because I have lived in Cambridge all of my life, I’m raising my family here and after 8 years of being a leader on the School Committee, particularly for our most vulnerable children and families, I feel compelled to bring this experience and commitment to the broader range of challenges facing our city. With an open seat on the Council, I’ve been encouraged by family, friends and supporters to pursue this tremendous opportunity and I’m extremely excited about it, but I need your help.

If elected, I will continue to put the good of the City and its residents ahead of personal or political gain. I will champion such issues as early childhood education, family friendly low and middle income affordable housing, continuing education and job training for young adults and supporting the thousands of Cambridge families struggling with poverty.

For 20 years, I have worked as a social worker with at-risk children and their families. I have spent my professional life advocating and ensuring that our most vulnerable have a fair chance in our world. I have worked collaboratively with state agencies and non-profits and have spent my days solving problems to improve lives.

With your help, I will bring these progressive values to the City Council. Please visit www.marcmcgovern.com for more information.

Priorities:
These are some of the key issues that I believe are facing our city. As I continue to listen and talk with people from every neighborhood, I will add to this list, so check back for more information:

Housing/Affordability: Cambridge has changed a great deal over the past 20 years - much for the good, but not all. As a native Cantabrigian I have watched families, friends and seniors forced out of our city due to rising housing costs. If we are going to maintain Cambridge’s diversity, then we must create additional low and middle income housing, including housing for families with children.

Poverty: Cambridge must have leaders who intuitively pay attention to families who are the most vulnerable and marginalized due to economic status. I have worked for 20 years with the poor and my priority commitment is to help these families move out of poverty. It will take advocacy, policy, and funding to ensure that all of our families have the opportunity to succeed. As the council and the city change, we must not lose focus on this core mission, one that I have spent my life working and living for.

Development: Development and re-development are inevitable. Much of the development in Cambridge has had positive results, not the least of which is bringing financial stability to our city that allows us to have a well funded school system, build state of the art, green buildings, increase affordable housing opportunities, and fund nationally recognized human services programs. Although there are these benefits to development, we must not allow it to go on unchecked or without meaningful community input. We must respect the concerns of our residents, many of whom are feeling overshadowed by taller, larger buildings, no matter how beneficial they may be to the city’s bottom line.

I am concerned that the development conversation is becoming polarized between those who want to build high and those who would stop development altogether. I would like to see a new, open process where residents have input early in the planning and not as an afterthought, where community benefits are clear and transparent, and where residents and developers are sitting at the table together.

Education: Having spent 8 years on the School Committee and 20 years working with children, I know how important educational quality is to Cambridge. Although the City Council does not directly run our schools, I do feel there are three important ways that the Council can support quality education:

1. Early childhood education and care: The research is irrefutable. What children learn in the first years of life sets the stage for their success in school. As a school committeeperson I have seen firsthand the gap that exists between students who enter kindergarten having received a high quality early childhood education and those who have not. If we are serious about closing the achievement gaps in our schools, the City Council must prioritize early childhood education and care. I had the honor of co-chairing the Blue Ribbon Commission on Early Childhood Education and Care with Counselor Marjorie Decker. We made great strides in gaining additional funding, as well as professional development, for our early childcare providers and educators. Yet Cambridge has yet to achieve the level of high quality, affordable early childhood education for all that our children deserve. I will lead the charge toward that goal as a city councilor.
2. School Budget: Our school system is well funded and we should be proud that Cambridge so values our public schools. The City Council votes on the school budget presented to them by the School Committee and Superintendent; it cannot add or subtract programs. However, the council should re-evaluate the budget process. As a three-time budget co-chair on the School Committee I know well how this process works. Like other city departments, the School Department waits for the City Manager to tell them how approximately much funding they will receive in the upcoming budget. This is a backwards process - in which educators fit their program into a specific dollar limit, rather than designing programs based on an educational rationale and then looking at how much that program will cost and how much is financially feasible to do. I think the school department and other city departments should start with a plan to budget and not a budget to plan.
3. School Buildings: Over the course of the next several years, the City Council will have to vote on funding the renovations and/or rebuilding of two schools, the Cambridge Street and Vassal Lane buildings. As a long-term school committeeperson, I know how badly these buildings need to be upgraded and will support funding to renovate or rebuild these schools. Yet, I also know that, once the city takes over the project, the educators and families are often left out of the planning. I want to see teachers, principals, district administration and the community involved in designing the best educational facilities for our children.

Public Safety: As a social worker for 20 years, I firmly believe in funding prevention and intervention programs. If we maximize our education, our job opportunities, our human services programs, and our community outreach, we will resolve many of the public safety issues facing our city. We have a police force and a police commissioner who value community policing and building relationships with residents. That puts us far ahead of other municipalities. I will work with the police department to continue our community policing efforts.

I would like to see additional social workers and community workers on our streets, engaging with our young people and helping them feel connected to our city. I will support human services programs that provide our youth with places to go, continuing education, and job training to help them get back on track. Overall, Cambridge is a safe city and we need to build on our success.

Seniors: I applaud the work of Mayor Henrietta Davis and the Silver Ribbon Commission. She and the many others, who helped in its work, have pointed out the challenges faced by many of our senior residents. I will work closely with my colleagues on the council to ensure that we are prioritizing the needs of our seniors so they are not forced to leave Cambridge as they get older.

Town-Gown Relationships: Having grown up in Cambridge, surrounded by Harvard MIT and Lesley, I have experienced both the good and bad of our relationships with them. These universities bring tourists and revenue to the city; they also provide jobs, offer partnerships with our schools and human services, and attract businesses. However, these institutions have also crept more and more into our neighborhoods, without always paying their fair share of taxes we lose through their expansion. I will work with my colleagues and the city manager to continue being a supportive and respectful host city, but I will also insist that our universities be good neighbors and do more to support Cambridge residents.

Marc McGovern 2013 Candidate Profile - Cambridge Chronicle

Candidate's 2011 responses    Candidate's 2009 responses    Candidate's 2007 responses

CCTV candidate video (2013)