Robert Winters – Cambridge City Council Candidate – 2023

Cambridge Municipal Election - Tuesday, November 7, 2023

A Different Kind of Candidate
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Since you asked … and even if you didn’t … here are my top priorities and concerns:Robert Winters

  • The City Charter – The City is currently engaged in a Charter Review process with recommendations due at the end of this year. Those recommendations will be submitted to the City Council for review, and the City Council will only then decide what to forward to the state legislature and eventually to Cambridge voters. I want to be part of that review and to be in a position to help decide what changes are appropriate and in the best interest of all of us. I believe that I am better suited to this task than ALL of the other candidates seeking your #1 vote this year.
     
  • Civic culture, public participation, and civic unity – For the last several decades I have been doing all that I can to promote a civic culture that involves public participation, education of voters and all residents, and the goal of fostering civic unity over factionalism. To this end I created the Cambridge Civic Journal, the CCJ Forum, the Cambridge Candidate Pages, a voluminous archive of election-related documentation, and more. I have also hosted 600 episodes (and counting) of the revived broadcast Cambridge InsideOut. I absolutely express personal opinions (don’t we all?), but the main thrust is always public information and encouragement of civic participation. The Cambridge Candidate Pages, however, have always been just the statements of candidates and their links and contact information without any editorializing. Their sole purpose has always been to level the playing field among all candidates so that any role of campaign finance is reduced.
     
  • Revival of local journalism and democracy – This is an ongoing battle to restore and augment the kind of journalism that is an essential part of a healthy democracy. There was a time when several local newspapers covered City Council meetings and a whole range of civic affairs in Cambridge. Reporters even had their own table in the City Council chamber and their names even appeared in the City’s annual reports. The Cambridge Chronicle came into existence at the same time that Cambridge transitioned from a town to a city - two peas in a pod. Civic journalism has to be more than just blogs and mailing lists. We need a common “water cooler” around which we can all gather to discuss matters of importance outside of our own personal silos. We also need a common space where we can promote and report on all of the non-political aspects of life in Cambridge – births, deaths, announcements, youth sports, local businesses, public safety, and a whole lot more. It is a tragedy that the ownership of the Cambridge Chronicle continues to abandon its role as “the oldest weekly newspaper in America”. It is wonderful that other entities are stepping up to partially fill this void, but we really do need a “paper of record” that transcends the lifespans of all of us involved in this mission - and that means both print and electronic media of all forms.
     
  • Full accounting of the relationship between City initiatives and municipal finance – During every political campaign, many candidates are willing to promise you the moon, the stars, and more - without ever mentioning how to pay for any of these promises. Commercial taxes are seen as a bottomless punchbowl from which we can refresh the City’s coffers, but more recently the rapidly growing City Budget is now reaching over into residential taxes - especially one- to three-family property owners.
     
  • Addressing matters of energy resources, transportation, and the affordability of housing comprehensively and in partnership with all cities and towns in the Greater Boston region. What we have seen over the last several years is a trend toward unilateralism and the false belief that any one city or town can deliver housing affordability. Devoting enormous sums of City tax revenue to create deed-restricted housing may provide some benefit to those lucky enough to access that subsidized housing, but this fails to address the greater challenge of balancing what people can pay against the high costs of rent or the purchase of a home. Also lacking in the City’s approach is that - like it or not - building equity in one’s home is an essential element in building the kind of wealth to sustain not only the current occupants but also the next generations of those families - and this is especially true for people who have historically been marginalized. While it is absolutely correct to suggest that “not all people can live in Cambridge”, that’s a somewhat shallow response if the region cannot provide good housing options and transportation options that are both affordable, reliable, and convenient - and that includes being able to get to and from destinations in a reasonable amount of time. Our local City Council cannot solve this, but they and the City administration can exercise leadership in partnership with our neighboring municipalities and the state and federal government in order to move toward this goal. In regard to energy resources, it’s easy to pass ordinances mandating transitioning away from fossil fuels and toward electric utilities, but unless the electric grid can support all that additional electrification this is just a fool’s mission. It’s also important to respect the personal choices that people make and not simply subject people to government (unfunded) mandates.
     
  • Balancing the needs of local businesses and residents in all matters of traffic, parking, and all forms of transportation. – Our roads need to meet the needs of all of us, and constantly pitting one form of transportation user against others is both offensive and impractical. There is no question that cyclists want and need greater safety on our roads, but suggesting that the only way to build in that safety is via mandates and rigid timelines and one monolithically preferred treatment of roads (that were never properly reviewed for this treatment) is the antithesis of good planning. Some roads that are heavily used by cyclists absolutely should have some degree of separation or even designation as “bicycle boulevards” where bikes are given the right of way over other transportation modes. Our current ordinance emphasizes “comfort” (and we all want that, right) but not necessarily greater safety - especially at intersections. In addition, some of the treatments the City has recently done create clear hazards for motor vehicles and others. There are also many situations where curb access is essential for abutting property owners and for vehicles making deliveries (and we all know that there are more of these than ever before thanks to online shopping). These needs cannot simply be wished away because some candidates choose to sign a “Bike Pledge” to neither see nor hear any of the truths about these competing uses. [By the way, my bicycle was my primary mode of transportation for most of the 45 years I have lived in Cambridge. I was also in the group who first marched up to City Hall over 30 years ago to demand that a Bicycle Committee be established.]
     
  • Education and incentives for environmentally better choices. – The emphasis here is on education and choice and not simply top-down mandates. Even though we passed a “Mandatory Recycling Ordinance” over 30 years ago as a pre-condition to create our curbside recycling program, the emphasis from our Public Works Department has always been on education and assistance with enforcement and penalties only after all else had failed. [I was on the Recycling Advisory Committee for 22 years, by the way.] Cambridge residents can generally be depended upon “to do the right thing” when they understand all the choices and consequences. Property owners need some degree of flexibility and choice in how to manage their property - even as we strive to restore our tree canopy. Property owners need to be able to make good economic choices in building improvements and utilities, and they can generally be counted on to make good choices as long as there are incentives available to transition toward more environmentally-friendly alternatives.

I have been actively involved in civic affairs, voter education, and advocacy for over three decades and I would like the opportunity to have a vote in matters of consequence. This is a time when many residents have come to feel that most of the city councillors are too busy pursuing their own private agendas to actually take the time to listen to people. A heartfelt petition sent to the City Council signed by nearly a thousand residents was simply “Placed on File” without discussion or referral to an appropriate subcommittee. Apparently, the only available “Means of Redress” is the municipal election - and that’s not really a good mechanism for matters that come up during a City Council term.

I first became involved in civic affairs when I was appointed by Mayor Al Vellucci to a “Water & Sewer Advisory Committee” in the 1980s. I can’t say that we accomplished much of anything, but I learned a lot about the city’s infrastructure and I have been an “aquavangelist” ever since. I also met a lot of people who remain friends to this day. That’s one of the rarely mentioned benefits of serving on City boards - building relationships with other civic-minded people. This is something most of the purely political people will likely never understand or appreciate.

In the late 1980s I joined with a small group of residents to organize Cambridge’s all-volunteer drop-off recycling program that eventually became the curbside recycling program that we have today. At its peak we had almost 500 volunteers and we successfully lobbied to make recycling a permanent part of the Public Works Department. This was brutally hard work, but it led to lifelong friendships among the volunteers - especially the core group who did most of the organizing and handled all the logistics. My orange and brown VW Bus served as the supply vehicle and the place where volunteers could grab some food and coffee during our long work days at the Sherman Street site.

Compost ManRobert - RecyclingI was the guy on the other end of the Recycling Hotline for five years after the curbside recycling program was successfully established and handled lots of calls every day. We used an answering machine in those days that was located in the radio tower at DPW. I also was appointed to the Recycling Advisory Committee and served for the next 22 years.

In the early 1990s I also took on my next project – promoting backyard composting and distributing compost bins. In order to do this I created the nonprofit Cambridge Recycling, Inc. for the primary purpose of purchasing compost bins from the manufacturers and selling them at cost to residents. During those years my basement often looked like a warehouse, but we got the job done. My home phone number was at the desk of DPW and on the recycling information distributed by the City, and I received countless calls from people wanting to know about composting or compost bins. I enjoyed being “Compost Man” and made a lot of friends along the way. We distributed ~2000 bins before turning the job over to the good folks in the Recycling Division at DPW. I still occasionally get calls about composting and composters.

My next major involvement in the 1990s was the promotion of proportional representation (PR) and ranked-choice-voting. Cambridge had been using PR since 1941 but we were the only place in the USA still using it - even though some form of PR is used in most democracies around the world. We understood that no other municipality would ever adopt our system when they discovered that “The Count” took nearly a week to complete, so we got the bright idea to advocate for the computerization of the Cambridge elections. David Goode and I convinced Sheila Russell to submit a City Council order to explore the idea, and this led to the creation of the Technical Working Committee for Computerization of the Cambridge Elections (TWCC) on which I served and which led to the first computer count in 1997. I have served in an advisory capacity to the Election Commission ever since.

Round stickerI have to admit that during the 1990s I was also a City Council candidate. In fact, in 1993 I got the #1 endorsement from the Cambridge Chronicle and the Cambridge Tab. That was a good education for me about the political side of Cambridge (as opposed to the civic side). I am actually using the buttons, bumper stickers, and yard signs this year that we ordered 30 years ago. How about that for Reduce, Reuse and Recycle!

In September 1997 I got the bright idea early one morning after a sleepless night to create the newsletter “Central Square News” which I soon renamed the “Cambridge Civic Journal”. That started out as a printed newsletter that was also distributed via email. It later became an online publication (curiously located at rwinters.com because that was the domain I claimed in my later days as a candidate). This year I re-claimed the subdomain http://vote.rwinters.com as my candidate site. It’s sobering to think that I have now been maintaining the Cambridge Civic Journal for more than a quarter-century.

I have taken on countless tasks with the Cambridge Civic Journal over the years - all in the quest for education about civic (and occasionally political) affairs in and around Cambridge. I have a particular penchant for all things historical in Cambridge, and that included compiling a record of all of the candidates and all of the elections since 1941 including all the details of each of the PR Counts which I update every two years. This is now THE place where everyone goes to access that information. Even though Cambridge operates under the Plan E Charter, there didn’t used to be anywhere on the City’s website that actually spelled out the Plan E Charter or the law governing our PR elections, so I created web pages and documentation for these. [My documents were later downloaded and made available on the City’s website - with my blessing.]

One thing that always disturbed me was how there was no level playing field for candidates in our municipal elections. That’s why I created the Cambridge Candidate Pages - to create a uniform interface and gallery where voters could find out about all the candidates - in their own words and with links to their own candidate sites. I never expressed opinions or preferences on the Candidate Pages. In recent Cambridge elections, they have received as high as 21,656 unique visitors and 150,374 individual pages viewed in the days leading up to the municipal election. Strange as this may seem, I am still maintaining these pages for all candidates - even though I am now a candidate myself. Worry not – it rarely takes me more than a few minutes to upload the information and images for any candidate, though I sometimes wish I had some help. Nevertheless, I see this as my duty and responsibility.

Starting in 2013 I have been hosting Cambridge InsideOut on Cambridge Community Television (CCTV). We have now broadcast almost 600 half-hour programs. The name is borrowed from the original Cambridge Inside Out show created and hosted by Glenn Koocher with regular panelists Barbara Ackermann, Saundra Graham, Tom Rafferty, and Marty Foster.

I also served on the City’s Green Ribbon Open Space Committee as well as the Library 21 Committee. In addition to generating good ideas, these endeavors also led to some great friendships. I can never recommend enough the many benefits of serving on City boards and commissions. It is perhaps unfortunate that they have been subject to political influences more recently – and objectivity, creativity, and responsiveness to city residents may be a casualty of this trend. [My current wish is that they take most of these meetings out of Zoom and reserve that option only for remote access for those unable to attend in person.]

I have served on the Central Square Advisory Committee since 2001 and have been its most active participating member. I hope the only reason that may end will be my election as a city councillor.

I also served on the Envision Cambridge Advisory Committee as well as its Housing Working Group. This was a “learning experience” in how City staff has come to dominate and in many ways direct the outcomes of what are supposed to be collaborative efforts between residents and other essential parties.

I also wanted very much to serve on the current Charter Review Committee – since I felt I was perhaps the most qualified person in the city for that role, but that’s an intriguing story perhaps best told elsewhere – and a good indicator of how the current City Council now often acts privately in ways that they’ll never acknowledge publicly. Nonetheless, John Pitkin, Gregorio Leon, and I researched and produced (with a few voice-overs by Jim Braude) the half-hour video “The Cambridge City Charter: From Town Meeting to Plan E” in order to provide some historical context on how we eventually came to adopt our current Charter. We are planning additional episodes – though the municipal election is definitely competing for our time.

By the way, I also have a Ph.D. in Mathematics and teach Multivariable Calculus, Linear Algebra, and Ordinary Differential Equations courses at the Harvard Extension School and Harvard Summer School. I have previously held various faculty positions at Boston University, Wellesley College, Harvard University, Brandeis University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

I also have a vast collection of underground comics and the complete run of the National Lampoon. I also created the National Lampoon Covers page. [This may at least partially explain my iconoclastic sense of humor.] I am also the webmaster, Board member, principal walk leader, and publisher of the Towpath Topics newsletter for the Middlesex Canal Association.

As I mentioned above, I am neither a dragon-slayer nor someone who would ever feel comfortable making big promises that only a majority of city councillors and the cooperation of City staff could ever possibly deliver, but I can list a number of statements, principles, priorities, and ideas that may either distinguish me from other candidates or make me sound just like the other candidates. Here’s a list (more to come as the spirit moves me):

Here’s a small sample of pieces posted on the CCJ Forum [all postings listed here]:

Robert Winters - 2013

I have taught mathematics since 1982 at Wellesley College, Boston University, Harvard University, MIT, and Brandeis University. I was a Preceptor of Mathematics in the Harvard University Mathematics Department from 1994 through 2001, and I continue to teach Multivariable Calculus, Linear Algebra, and Ordinary Differential Equations courses at the Harvard Extension School and Harvard Summer School. I intend to continue teaching regardless of the outcome in the municipal election because nobody should give up their regular job in order to serve in elective office.

More at my candidate website: vote.rwinters.com

Information on all the candidates at the Cambridge Candidate Pages: vote.cambridgecivic.com

Contact me at Robert@rwinters.com.
I am more than happy to talk about my candidacy and about my preferred candidates for City Council and School Committee.

I’m not here to promise you the world or to slay any dragons. I simply want to be your representative. - Robert