Phone Polling on the Affordable Housing Overlay

9/7/2019

Cambridge residents are being polled by an anonymous group for views on current city councillors, issues facing the city, and their positions on the Affordable Housing Overlay (AHO) coming up for a vote. Who is paying for this poll? And, equally importantly, what questions is it asking? And why?

Poll is coming from a telephone number in Marshfield , Ma.

Here are the questions
*as best transcribed and recalled live at the time.

I. What are your views on current city councillors?
Answer possibilities: favorable unfavorable, unsure, don’t know.
Marc McGovern
Jan Devereux
Dennis Carlone
Craig Kelly
Allana Mallon
Sumbul Siddique
Denise Simmons
Tim Toomey
Quinton Zondervan
*Note this poll includes Jan Devereux who is not running for reelection - which is strange.

II What issue concerns you the most currently in the city?
            Affordable Housing
            Traffic
            Education
            Bikes/Bike Lanes
Schools
            Drugs
            Homelessness
            Other
* Note that the term "affordable housing" means many different things. We all support more affordable housing,
but to some this means rent control, to others it means renter protections, to still others it means building more
market rate housing, to still others it means adding more inclusionary housing. None of this is spelled out here.
**note too, that there is nothing in this poll on climate change or the environment, infrastructure or planning. Why?

III What do you think about the work that has been done to improve the city squares?
            Central Square
            Inman Square
*Note: there is nothing here on Harvard Square, Porter Square, Kendall, or even recent city-approved
  development projects in East Cambridge, Alewife and elsewhere.

IV What is your view of City Council
            Positive
            Negative
            Not sure
*Note: there is nothing in here asking our views of the "City" (the City Manager - who is coming up for
  reappointment next term.
**Note too: there is nothing in this poll about approval of the city's Community Development Department that is
behind the deeply flawed Affordable Housing Overlay proposal,

V Are you aware or the Affordable Housing Overlay
         Yes/ No
*Note: good question, but will the poll-takers actually share the results with the public?

VI The Affordable Housing Overlay will enable the city to build 100% affordable housing throughout the city by changing some of the restrictions currently in place (rough transcription).
            Do you support it?
            Do you oppose?
*Note: the AHO is very complex, why do they not ask separately if we oppose or support individual elements of the
proposal, like four stories everywhere, seven stories on the corridors, "as of right" (taking away current citizen legal appeal, or the change in design standards and review oversight.

VII Age

VIII Race

IX Education level

In the end key questions remain about who commissioned this poll (an expensive endeavor): is it one of the current city councillors who supports the AHO? Is it a political PAC supporting the AHO (A Better Cambridge most notably)? Was it the City of Cambridge? Who ever it was, they did NOT provide any information of who has paid for this political message/poll? Why did they leave out critical other issues and concerns in the city?

4 Comments

Heather Hoffman

9/7/2019 09:12:06 pm

I've actually gotten this phone call twice, probably more than a week apart. It is strange to have no indication who's paying for it. Also, the choices on the City Councillor question were favorable, unfavorable, unsure and don't know, as I recall. I would have liked mixed as a choice. It was interesting to me that some of their names were mispronounced.

CCC

9/9/2019 06:20:47 am

Yes to the strangeness of the anonymity. And thanks for the correction, we have fixed it. And yes also to the mispronunciation although that might have because this was an outside polling firm.

Carolyn Shipley

9/7/2019 11:30:58 pm

There haven't been any improvements done to Central Square recently. What do they mean? They do anticipate changing Carl Barron Plaza in connection with the River Street reconstruction. The only "improvement" in Central Square has been the addition of a public toilet. If one considers that an improvement, well... Right now Inman Square is a mess because of the plan to change the configuration of the roads, which, by the way, has meant the destruction of most of Vellucci Plaza. I wonder if any robo calls went to people living in the vicinity of the disruption/construction in Inman Square.

9/9/2019 06:23:36 am

Thanks Carolyn. I guess they mean the addition of more stores, but City Council can't take credit for that. And Yes to the mess they are making Vellucci Plaza. On where these calls went, they clearly went to East Cambridge (where Heather lives) and that area is a mess too. My guess is that the polling was city wide.

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