Message from the City Manager

As we fast forward and dive deeper into 2025, I wanted to leverage this opportunity to share some highlights and reflect on all we have accomplished over the past year. I am proud of what we have achieved together in 2024. It reinforced Cambridge is a City and community like none other.

I continue to be inspired every day by the ways that we care for each other and work toward a better world. We are entering a period of challenge, contentiousness, and uncertainty, and I’m thankful that our local government is strong, prepared to defend our values, and committed to building a better community for everyone who lives, works, and plays in Cambridge.

We are a community where so much work is happening. For example, last year saw the rollout of two major initiatives that have been long-term priorities set by the City Council. First, we launched the Cambridge Preschool Program (CPP), which provides funding to cover the cost of school-day, school-year preschool tuition for every Cambridge four-year old and prioritized three-year olds. We also launched our Community Assistance Response and Engagement (CARE) Team, an unarmed alternative response to emergency 911 calls. You can read more about CARE later in this newsletter.

I’m proud that we have built a budget that reflects the goals and priorities of the Council and the community. We are investing $47 million toward affordable housing, $16 million toward initiatives addressing homelessness and housing instability, $34 million to expand the Cambridge preschool program, $17 million toward our Climate Net Zero goals, and $13 million toward Vision Zero and Traffic Safety. The Cambridge Public Schools represent the single largest part of our budget at $270 million and this year we have made significant increases in teacher salaries including to support a longer school-day which is a long-time School Committee priority. We continue to support so many of the important programs that have been built over the years in collaboration with the Council: services and support for the unhoused, job training and continuing education programs, urban composting that is expanding to serve both residents and small businesses, our urban forestry division that is planting more than 1,000 trees every year, and so much more.

A key priority of mine has been to embrace transparency and accountability. We hold an incredibly high standard in Cambridge. We recently conducted a City Manager Performance Review, which is an important commitment to accountability that I made when I took the job. This is the second year the performance review has taken place – the implementation aligned when I became City Manager -- and I once again appreciated the opportunity to participate in and reflect on our ambitious goals, as well as where we have succeeded, met what we set out to accomplish, or the areas that we need to continue to focus on in order to improve our overall performance.

My schedule was packed with Council meetings (38 by the end of 2024), committee hearings, community events, town halls, and hundreds of one-on-one conversations and virtual catch-ups. These thoughtful conversations have allowed us to make more informed decisions in our operations and improve services tailored to the specific needs and desires of our community. I’m excited to see this effort amplified in 2025.

Cambridge is run by an amazing team of leaders and staff who are working every day to build a better community and I regularly hear stories of city staff going above and beyond. Our partners in the community are doing incredible work running nonprofits, businesses, and advocacy groups that strengthen our civic fabric. Our residents are showing up, providing feedback, and engaging in local government. And the City Council continues to stand out as one of the most representative, transparent, and accountable elected bodies in the Commonwealth.

I am eager and look forward to the year ahead, where we have countless opportunities to make a meaningful impact in this beautiful community. Thank you for the opportunity to serve and for the work we are able to do together.

Best wishes and I look forward to a great rest of 2025!

Yi-An Huang, City Manager