Adriane B. Musgrave
2017 Candidate for Cambridge City Council

Home address:
5 Newport Rd. #5,
Cambridge, MA 02140

Contact information:
website: www.voteadriane.com
email: adriane@voteadriane.com
phone: 617-520-4612

Send contributions to:
secure.actblue.com/donate/adriane-musgrave

Adriane Musgrave is a new candidate this year.

Experienced, Dedicated & Ready to Serve

Adriane will fight to ensure that everyone in Cambridge has access to economic opportunity. She will champion smart growth development so that Cambridge remains affordable for everyone; advocate for high-impact initiatives and funding that address our city’s rising inequality and inequities; and maintain high-quality city services and infrastructure. We are so lucky to live in Cambridge. Let's work together to make it even better.

Learn more about Adriane’s platform and policy proposals at www.voteadriane.com.

Adriane Musgrave is the top-ranked new candidate endorsed by A Better Cambridge.

Watch Adriane talk about why she’s running for City Council.

Devoted to Cambridge with Family Roots
Adriane has lived in Cambridge for nearly 10 years and the Boston area for over 15 years. The future of Cambridge is very important to Adriane and her husband Brian, because they were married last year and plan to raise their children in this special community, including sending them to our public schools.

Fun Fact: Adriane's grandparents also started their married life in Cambridge when her grandfather studied at EDS to become an Episcopalian priest.

Committed to Public Service
Adriane is committed to public service, having started her career working for then-Senator John Kerry in his Washington, D.C. office where she focused on veterans issues as an intern. Earlier this year, Adriane left her job to run full-time for city council. She's in this for the long-haul, and is ready to serve all Cambridge residents across the city.

Fighting Poverty & Inequality
Adriane serves on the executive board of Interise, a national nonprofit that tackles poverty and inequality by helping small businesses grow. The World Bank calls it a top 25 "must-see" program. Interise works in over 85 communities across the country and has helped 6,000+ small businesses grow, creating jobs at 5x the annual rate of the private sector. About 65% of the businesses are minority-owned or located in a low-resource community. Just recently, Adriane took the lead in helping the organization draft a new strategic plan.

Experienced, Data-Driven Leader
Adriane is an experienced management consultant to the Fortune 500 who knows the importance of using both data and community engagement to address our city's complex issues. She is a diligent and fast learner capable of handling the wide-ranging issues that come before our City Council. She also knows the power of large companies and, as a member of the Alliance for Business Leadership, believes our business community should help advance the progressive policies that will help everyone thrive.

Athlete & Outdoor Enthusiast
Adriane is always up for a physical challenge. She played D1 soccer at BU and today spends her free time cycling country roads, running along the Charles, hiking mountains, and trying to play more tennis. She reads voraciously, shoots documentary photography, and loves going to plays - especially at the A.R.T.!

She has a B.A. in international relations and earned her MBA while working full-time - both from Boston University. She originally hails from South Florida.

Platform & Policy Initiatives

Top Policy Priorities

1. Prioritize a City-Wide Affordable Housing Overlay that would allow Cambridge to keep and attract more middle-income families and enable affordable housing developers (especially nonprofits) to better compete with private developers.
2. Focus on children and families so that everyone in Cambridge has access to opportunity, especially when 18% of children and nearly 40% of single mothers are living in poverty in Cambridge - rates that are growing and higher than the state average:
• Ensure that all children have access to high-quality, affordable after-school and summer camp programs by 2020.
• Establish universal pre-K starting at age 3 for all children in Cambridge by 2024, as part of the efforts of the Cambridge Early Childcare Task Force.
3. Enthusiastically support the Cambridge Bike Plan to create safe roads and infrastructure for cyclists, pedestrians, and drivers; as a bike commuter and road cyclist for 10+ years, I've seen the huge increase in ridership and urgent need to add protected lanes, separated lanes, "sharrows," and supporting infrastructure like bike racks and pumping stations across the city. We will also need to increase our police presence and build a culture of safety and accountability among our cycling community so that everyone follows the rules of the road.
4. Conduct an evidence-based, government-wide audit to understand how our current policies and systems may perpetuate the racial opportunity gap; the Government Alliance on Race & Equity (GARE) is working with more than 50 governments across the country, including Boston, to acknowledge our country's long history of racial inequity and restructure our systems so that our government works for everyone.
5. Expand the Community Engagement Team (CET) to full-time positions so that each liaison is fully equipped to support and advocate for the needs of our immigrant and minority residents within city programs, our schools, and partner providers.

Smart Growth Policies for Affordable Housing

• Prioritize a City-Wide Affordable Housing Overlay that would allow Cambridge to keep and attract more middle-income families and enable affordable housing developers (especially nonprofits) to better compete with private developers.
• Reform our zoning codes to promote mixed-income developments and address our areas of concentrated poverty so that all neighborhoods are economically and racially diverse, and so that we can lead a national movement for an Economic Fair Housing Act.
• Require MIT to house 75% of its graduate students over the next 10 years, and make this commitment a condition of approval for its Volpe site proposal; discuss similar commitments with Harvard and Lesley.
• Create plans for developing city-owned parking lots into workforce housing so that our middle income families and individuals can stay in Cambridge, and begin discussions with private owners of parking lots for the same purpose.
• Explore ways to offer property tax exemptions to encourage small property owners to offer below-market rents, or for developers to prioritize workforce housing and family-sized units.
• Identify abandoned buildings and vacant lots, and work with the property owners to develop long-term development plans to stave off blight; evaluate a potential zoning ordinance that would add tax increases for properties that have been abandoned or vacant for 5, 10, and 15+ years.
• Establish a Voluntary Action Fund for Housing Affordability that would ask our local corporate employers, venture capital/private equity community, major institutions, nonprofits, and benevolent residents to help finance more workforce housing.
• Establish a Community Contract Enforcement office so that developers are held accountable for their final projects, specifically so that the community's negotiated requirements have been implemented.
• Ensure that our zoning codes and project approval processes are not overly burdensome to residents requesting small-scale changes to their homes.
• Amend the zoning code to more easily allow artists to create live/work spaces, thereby keeping a vibrant community of artists in the city.

Economic Opportunity for Everyone

• Conduct an evidence-based, government-wide audit to understand how our current policies and systems may perpetuate the racial opportunity gap; the Government Alliance on Race & Equity (GARE) is working with more than 50 governments across the country, including Boston, to acknowledge our country's long history of racial inequity and restructure our systems so that our government works for everyone.
• Prioritize and expand programs that create family financial stability and opportunity for the 18% of children and nearly 40% of single mothers are living in poverty in Cambridge, including access to affordable childcare and reducing cliff effects that prevent families from building wealth.
• Ensure that all low- and moderate-income families are forming support networks of empowerment and building savings, key factors in long-term financial stability.
• Champion universal early childhood education starting at age 3 for all children in Cambridge by 2024, as part of the efforts of the Cambridge Early Childcare Task Force.
• Guarantee, and then ensure, that all children have access to affordable after-school programs and a full slate of summer camp activities by 2020; family income should not be a barrier, though today, many low-income Cambridge families say it is.
• Establish a Task Force on College Success with the goal of raising the six-year college graduation rate of CRLS students from 30% to 60% over the next 10 years.
• Expand the Community Engagement Team (CET) to full-time positions so that each liaison is fully equipped to support and advocate for the needs of our immigrant and minority residents within city programs, our schools, and partner providers.
• Increase the city's diversity procurement spending, especially construction, to 35% within 5 years because it has been proven that anchor institutions are critical for creating opportunity for minority SMB owners.
• Ensure that the Port, Wellington/Harrington, and East Cambridge receive a substantial amount of the Community Benefits (linkage fee funds) from the development happening in the backyards of these communities and where many of our high-need residents live.
• Ensure that the city is investing in essential nonprofit community centers like the Margaret Fuller Neighborhood House and the East End House so that they are able to deliver high-quality programs to our critical communities.

High-Quality City Services & Infrastructure

• Enthusiastically support the Cambridge Bike Plan to create safe roads and infrastructure for cyclists, pedestrians, and drivers; as a bike commuter and road cyclist for 10+ years, I've seen the huge increase in ridership and urgent need to add protected lanes, separated lanes, "sharrows," and supporting infrastructure like bike racks and pumping stations across the city.
• Investigate adopting a shared parking system that would more efficiently maximize our available parking at all hours and for a range of uses.
• Encourage green infrastructure such as preserving and planting more trees, installing green roofs, using more permeable surfaces, and employing rainwater harvesting systems - for city projects, new developments, and residents.
• Prioritize bus infrastructure and rapid transit options (like dynamic lanes during rush hour) to encourage more predictable and efficient bus/public transit usage.
• Identify pilot programs to practice evidence-based policy-making, so that we better understand which programs are helping us achieve our community's goals and are leading to better outcomes for children, adults, and families.
• Support continued expansion of the curbside composting program, which will reach about half of households by 2020 and will keep us on target to reduce our trash volume 80% by 2050.
• Initiate Phase II of the Municipal Broadband Task Force to continue to address a lack of affordable digital access for our low-income households, WiFi in every square, and leveraging the city's fiber infrastructure for future digital needs.
• Propose using a texting system to alert residents if their car is about to be towed for street cleaning or otherwise.
• Better understand demand for keeping libraries open later, and then devise a plan for doing so if the need is present.
• Advocate for more benches across the city so that our senior citizens have more opportunities to be outside.

CCTV candidate video (2017)