City Manager Provides Annual Performance Review

The following is a memo shared by City Manager Yi-An Huang to the City Council on November 15, 2024.

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To the Honorable, the City Council:

Cambridge is an incredible city and I’m so grateful to the Mayor, Vice Mayor, and Councilors for this opportunity to serve. Over the last two years, I’ve had a chance to meet and work with so many people across our community. I’m 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 fight for our community.

The broader challenge is that trust in institutions is at an all-time low – which is why it’s critical that our local government embraces transparency and accountability. We hold an incredibly high standard here. By the end of 2024, we will have held 38 City Council meetings with public comment on every facet of city government. While the legal requirement is only that agenda topics are posted in advance, we release all our memos and backup materials to encourage more informed and open discussions. Council meetings start at 5:30 PM to provide people with a greater chance of participating and we often see more than 100 speakers providing public comment. The Council has also held many committee meetings to allow it to take a deeper dive into a myriad of topics that matter to our community. Our annual resident survey found that 44% of residents had contacted a City Councilor in the last year! By any reasonable measure, our local democracy is strong and healthy – a vibrant debate across our elected body to seek consensus, supported by a professional city staff that brings an independent set of research, expertise, and data.

This is the second year we have conducted a City Manager Performance Review, which is an important commitment to accountability that I made when I took the job. This review is the result of a structured process that began with approving the performance review process and City Manager Goals at the April 12 Government Operations Committee meeting. We held a mid-year check-in at the August 5 Government Operations Committee. This next step, submitting an annual review of goals and performance by November 15 will be followed by the City Council’s formal evaluation delivered at a Special City Council Meeting on December 11.

I’m looking forward to the conversation and feedback. Thank you to the City Council for this privilege and to our community for their trust.  

Summary of Goal Performance
The following goals were approved at the April 12, 2024 City Council meeting. These goals were set to be both achievable and ambitious and I have used as a rule of thumb that goals should have an ~80% chance of success.

Area	Goal	Status
Leadership	Prioritize key initiatives aligned to Council goals and provide regular updates	Partially Met
	Engage on regional priorities and advocate on behalf of the City to the state administration and legislature	Met
City Council Relationship	Collaborate with Mayor and Council to facilitate Council goal setting	Met
	Establish an improved process and system for coordinating awaiting reports with the City Council	Met
Management	Hire Chief Climate Officer and establish sustainability office to continue critical climate work included in the Net Zero Action and Resilient Cambridge plans	Met
	Develop HR roadmap that will guide a multi-year plan for implementing improved systems and processes that will serve, develop, and empower city staff	Met
	Complete annual performance reviews for the senior management team and expand training and performance review process to a broader group of non-union staff	Met
Community Engagement	Hire Director of Community Engagement and update community engagement approach with greater consistency across departments and sharing of best practices	Met
	Resident survey performance of >60% Excellent/Good on 2024 survey for overall performance of City government	Met
Culture	Implement annual employee engagement and satisfaction survey	Met
	Establish monthly Leadership Together meetings to improve communication, feedback, and connection across the city organization	Met
ADEI	Establish the American Freedman Commission as a new city department in line with the 2023 ordinance	Not Met
	Establish Antiracism, Equity, and Inclusion (AEI) Advisory Council to provide input and collaboration on the City’s AEI strategy and promote inclusive practices and leadership across departments	Met
City Operations	Achieve compliance with established service level agreements (SLAs) for operating department requests in SeeClickFix at an 80% level or above in the top 30 request categories	Met
Fiscal Management	Implement greater City Council engagement in the budget development process, including Finance Committee meetings prior to formal submission of the budget regarding: 1) operating budget, 2) capital budget, 3) police budget, and 4) ARPA program	Met
	Maintain strong fiscal position and AAA bond rating	Met
	Finalize ARPA contracts and amendments with all funding obligated	Met

 

Leadership
Effectively carry out the vision and direction set by the City Council including through development of goals and strategies as well as work closely with the Council to lead the City through significant events and crises.

 

Goal	Status
Prioritize key initiatives against Council goals and provide regular updates	Partially Met
Engage on regional priorities and advocate on behalf of the City to the state administration and legislature	Met

This 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 across our community. This has been one of our largest funding commitments over the past two budgets and the result of City Council actions that started almost a decade ago. CPP is delivering high quality early education that will reduce disparities in our community and provide financial relief to families burdened by the high cost of childcare. More than 800 children are now being served, with forty percent from low-income households. This has been an incredible effort with leadership from the Office of Early Childhood and close collaboration with Cambridge Public Schools. I’m so grateful for the vision, expertise, and hard work that went into this first year and we are excited to build on this success as the application deadline for the second year has recently concluded.

We also launched our Community Assistance Response and Engagement (CARE) Team, an unarmed alternative response to emergency 911 calls. This initiative started through the City Council’s actions in June 2020. City Manager Louis DePasquale formed a Task Force to Reimagine Public Safety that produced a report in May 2021 recommending the formation of a Community Safety Department. The initiative was further developed and funding was provided as part of the FY23 budget. One of my early actions was to hire Liz Speakman as the new Director for Community Safety in January 2023, and we have worked incredibly hard to hire and train a team of responders, develop clear policies, and establish a collaborative relationship with Emergency Communications and the Police Department. This past summer, the team began responding to mental health and other 911 calls; thus far, they have responded to more than 150 calls ranging from check person to psychiatric distress, while also working with dozens of community members to provide case management and referrals. Community support has been overwhelmingly positive to the CARE team’s presence and we are working toward expanding hours and call codes over the coming year.

These two examples demonstrate the importance of Council actions and the commitment from the City to successfully implement key priorities. However, it takes time to research ideas, develop plans, secure funding, hire leadership and staff, and build out a program. A common concern from the Council and the community is not knowing the status of major initiatives.

I set a goal to work toward prioritizing “key initiatives” aligned with Council goals and providing regular updates. This has been partially met. We have communicated more closely with the Council on prioritization of major initiatives. For instance, we presented a workplan to the Council across zoning initiatives when it became clear that we could not do multi-family housing zoning, Central Square zoning, and parking zoning all at the same time and made a collective decision on timelines. We have also used committees for regular updates on initiatives important to the Council: Climate Resilience at Health and Environment Committee on March 27; Net Zero Action Plan at Health and Environment Committee on April 24; Supplier Diversity at Economic Development Committee on May 29; Harvard PILOT negotiations at University Relations Committee on August 5; After School at Human Services Committee on May 1 and November 6; and Multi-Family Housing at Housing committee on May 8, May 22, June 27, July 17, and August 21.

The reality is there is so much work happening across the City. We are collaborating with the Council on new ideas regarding municipal vouchers, jobs trust, shared van service, and an opioid prevention center. And the City continues to work on long-term day-to-day operational programs like the Danehy Park Improvement Plan, Urban Forestry Master Plan, Zero Waste Master Plan 2.0, Five Year Street and Sidewalk Plan, Combined Sewer Overflow Control Plan, and much more. I’ve considered various ideas for how to capture all of this but having lived through various efforts to implement templates, trackers, and dashboards, I feel like we are in a reasonable place at this point.

Finally, an important part of last year’s feedback was how the City could participate more actively across regional priorities and establish a stronger presence for Cambridge at the state-level. I’ve taken this to heart and worked to advocate for important Council priorities. On housing, I testified in favor of a local transfer fee to support affordable housing at State Legislative Committees. The City hosted Secretary Ed Augustus of the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities to hear the incredible work that is happening in Cambridge on affordable housing. We also coordinated closely with the state throughout the year to support the shelter at the Registry of Deeds, including advocating for greater day programming and hours of operations for migrant families. On transportation, I testified in favor of more aggressive truck safety regulations to MassDOT and City staff were an important partner with DCR to quickly implement cycling safety improvements on Memorial Drive following the tragic death of a third cyclist this year. We have also established regular coordination meetings with the MBTA to support important Cambridge priorities. I’ve been elected co-chair of the MAPC Metro Mayors Coalition with Medford Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn and hosted MAPC in City Hall to celebrate an important modular housing federal grant for Cambridge, Boston, Everett, and Newton. Throughout all of this, I’ve appreciated the work and partnership of our state delegation.

A final thought is that connecting more closely with our federal delegation will be important in this coming year as we navigate potential changes coming from a new presidential administration. We are already working hard to assess existing policies and federal grants that could be affected, and developing plans for ensuring we can stand strong and carry out all our commitments regardless of the challenges ahead.

City Council Relationship

Establish a collaborative and transparent working relationship with the City Council.

 

Goal	Status
Collaborate with Mayor and Council to facilitate Council goal setting	Met
Establish an improved process and system for coordinating awaiting reports with the City Council	Met

We started the year with a new City Council and it has been an opportunity to review how we work together and what can be improved. I’m grateful to Mayor Simmons for holding a series of Council goal setting discussions. This is the first time we have reviewed goals since 2017, and I’m proud that we adopted updated goals at the May 6, 2024 Council meeting covering Housing and Zoning, Economic Opportunity and Equity, Transportation, Sustainability and Climate Resilience, and Government and Council Performance. These five goals don’t encompass everything that we do as a city but having a sense of our most important priorities is a big step forward.

We have also made significant progress on improving awaiting reports. We began the new term with 68 awaiting reports carried over from the last City Council term, after having struggled through a whole year facing a similar backlog while more requests were filed and passed every week. This has been an acute pain point for the City Council and also the community – the uncertainty of knowing when, if ever, a response was going to come back from the City.

The challenge has been volume – more Council requests are sent over than can be completed, especially on top of the day-to-day operations of the City, existing key initiatives, long-term planning, regional coordination, unexpected crises, and much more. I’m incredibly grateful for this Council’s decision to start fresh on awaiting reports and begin 2024 with a clean slate! This has helped us commit to a new Awaiting Reports Status Update that is refreshed for each Council meeting and lists the outstanding reports and the date that we are targeting to provide a response. Transparency and accountability are important, but also only possible when the amount of work is prioritized and realistic.

I believe this system has worked well this year. As of mid-November, 63 awaiting reports have been passed and the City has kept on track, responding to 51 with 12 outstanding. Councilors and community members can be confident that a written response is coming, and we are working with a greater sense of trust and collaboration.

A final reflection is that this is ultimately a relationship between the City and the Council. This year, we mourned the passing of Councilor Joan Pickett and celebrated the impact that she had on each of us. The memorial service for Joan was a beautiful reminder of her humility, her respect for colleagues and City staff, and her willingness to listen to views different than her own. She brought all her convictions to the Council chambers, but without the contentiousness that is sometimes so present in our politics. I hope that we will be able to hold onto that spirit of relationship and collegiality as we continue to tackle the hard work of finding consensus across our diverse and passionate community.

Management

Develop a strong City organization that has the people, processes, and systems to deliver on day-to-day operations and existing and new initiatives.

 

Goal	Status
Hire Chief Climate Officer and establish sustainability office to continue critical climate work included in the Net Zero Action and Resilient Cambridge plans	Met
Develop HR roadmap that will guide a multi-year plan for implementing improved systems and processes that will serve, develop, and empower city staff	Met
Complete annual performance reviews for the senior management team and expand training and performance review process to a broader group of non-union staff	Met

Cambridge has long been a leader in addressing climate change and the passage of our updated BEUDO regulations to set a 2035 Net Zero target for large commercial buildings was a major milestone. As the scale of our climate work has increased, it has been an important step to create a clearer leadership and organizational structure to support the work to come. I was thrilled to welcome Julie Wormser as our inaugural Chief Climate Officer. Her first day was in October, and Julie has an outstanding record of leadership and bringing stakeholders together to make big things happen. She has also both lived in Cambridge and been close to the climate work we have been doing. Her recent work at the Mystic River Watershed Association has made a tremendous impact on the resilience of our watershed which required creating a coalition across multiple municipalities as well as state and federal agencies. I’m looking forward to supporting her as we move forward on our ambitious climate goals.

Strengthening Human Resources has also been an important part of my management priorities. Rae Catchings was hired as our first Chief People Officer last year, and she has moved quickly to develop an HR roadmap that will guide our short and long-term investments in a stronger and healthier workforce. We provided the Council an update at the October 21 meeting with the key short-term goals focused on non-union performance reviews, establishing a baseline employee satisfaction survey, and a class and compensation study to ensure equity and market competitiveness across our 685 non-union job codes. Our people are ultimately our most valuable resource, and more work is continuing to better support staff including improving on-boarding, strengthening internal communications, and creating greater self-service (with less paper!).

Finally, we are continuing the roll-out of performance reviews for non-union staff. In our current state, our larger departments are conducting performance reviews that cover ~350 staff. This year, we are training and implementing performance reviews across ~100 additional staff with a centralized performance evaluation template. We’re excited about this phased approach which will allow us to expand reviews while also building in greater coordination and consistency across the City.

Community Engagement

Proactively communicate with the community, and create a range of opportunities for all stakeholders and residents to provide input and feedback, particularly communities whose voices are not typically heard by City Hall.

Goal	Status
Hire Director of Community Engagement and update community engagement approach with greater consistency across departments and sharing of best practices	Met
Resident survey performance of >60% Excellent/Good on 2024 survey for overall performance of City government	Met

Community engagement is a topic that we debate regularly and also sometimes struggle to define. Engaging the community to recruit for a  direct cash assistance program is very different from designing a new park or receiving feedback on an affordable housing development or the implementation of a bike lane. These differences are reflected in the different approaches each of our departments face interacting with residents.

I’ve been excited to have Jackson Price start as our Director of Community Engagement after he led our Participatory Budgeting (PB) program for the last three years. Jackson experimented and expanded participation in PB and achieved a record last year with over 1,100 ideas from the community and 10,522 residents voting on how to allocate funding to address community needs. He has been coordinating with leadership and staff across City departments, especially the Community Engagement Team in Human Services that began this work many years ago, and has formed a new interdepartmental community engagement Community of Practice to share best practices and process areas for improvement. I’m excited about sharing an update in the coming weeks for discussion with the City Council as we bring together a vision for community engagement across our organization.

Finally, I’m excited to provide the results of the 2024 Resident Survey, which we are committed to conducting annually. This is the second year that we have used more standardized questions and benchmarked against hundreds of other municipalities. We continue to see high marks for overall performance of City government, and I’m looking forward to discussing the data with the Council as we look at how to better respond to resident priorities and concerns.

Culture

Define and establish a healthy culture across the City that fosters collaboration, trust, empathy, and effective and efficient decision making.

 

Goal	Status
Implement annual employee engagement and satisfaction survey	Met
Establish monthly Leadership Together meetings to improve communication, feedback, and connection across the city organization	Met

This is the first year that we have done a comprehensive employee engagement survey that includes benchmarking with other municipalities. We saw a 39% participation rate which is just below the lower end of the 40-60% range, which is typical when starting out. Our expectation is that this will improve over time as we build it into our normal practice and show that we are responding to employee voices. We will also continue to explore different ways to increase the response rate.

We are sharing the overall results with the Council and community and are continuing to analyze the more detailed segmentation. Overall trust in senior leadership and the Council is lower than we would expect, as well as ratings on staff roles and responsibilities, career paths, and employee appreciation. Providing individual and group workspaces was also rated lower and HR as a function was recognized as an area that needs improvement with lower ratings on HR related questions. Because we have a broad workforce across very different departments, reviewing the detailed results will be important and we’re looking forward to sharing takeaways and actions steps in January. This exercise – to be transparent and accountable to our staff – is not always comfortable or easy, but the first step toward supporting employees is listening. And all the better if the feedback is sharp and honest, which can help us understand where we need to do better. I’m grateful to the hundreds of staff who took the time to provide us feedback this year, and I’m looking forward to processing together more soon.

I’ve also established a regular “Leadership Together” monthly meeting that includes ~180 key leaders across the City to improve communication, feedback, and connection across the organization. We have used this group to present major initiatives and updates, and also provide teams with a chance to showcase their work to the rest of the organization. Topics over the last year have included equity and inclusion, 2023 resident survey results, HR roadmap, budget development, and supplier diversity. I’m also continuing to do regular department meet-and-greets throughout the year and will continue to look for ways to build stronger connections across the organization, both to senior leadership and also across departments. 

Anti-racism, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

Advance anti-racism, diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts across the City, including strategy, organizational culture, HR, policy development, and service delivery.

 

Goal	Status
Establish the American Freedman Commission as a new city department in line with the 2023 ordinance	Not Met
Establish Antiracism, Equity, and Inclusion (AEI) Advisory Council to provide input and collaboration on the City’s AEI strategy and promote inclusive practices and leadership across departments	Met

The American Freedman Ordinance passed in December of 2023 and over the course of this year, I’ve been working with Mayor Simmons, Councilor Ayesha Wilson, and Deidre Travis Brown, our Chief of Equity and Inclusion to plan how to launch the commission. We have met regularly with Saskia VannJames, the primary advocate and thinker behind the ordinance and we have also begun to meet with community members to receive input. This has been a longer process than we had originally thought, but doing this complex work thoughtfully has been the priority. We have reviewed reparations projects around the country including in Boston, Evanston, San Francisco, and more. It’s so important that we wrestle with the legacy of our country and our City, and yet this work is also difficult and needs to be done carefully. We budgeted funding for this work in the FY25 budget and we have also started laying other foundations like opening conversations with Harvard regarding the Legacy of Slavery Initiative to explore potential intersections and collaborations. I’m optimistic that we will have more to share soon and this will remain an important goal for us to move more quickly, engage the community, and communicate more on in the new year.

We are also rolling out an AEI Advisory Council which will co-create, promote, and advance a culture of ADEI practices as part of our internal work. This will include 12-14 representatives from across City departments, as well as staff from key departments like Communications, Community Engagement, HR, and Legal. We are living through a time when the idea of equity and inclusion is being challenged and where bad faith attacks and extreme rhetoric are dominated the news. I’m grateful that in our community, these values are still held firmly and we are committed to the sometimes uncomfortable path of stepping outside of our own experiences to understand each other. And having a more inclusive structure where more voices can be part of how we shape this work is part of how we must move forward. There have been instances where the politics of identity do real harm, where performative statements and actions have replaced authentic engagement, and where canceling dissenting voices has driven away people who would otherwise be ready to listen. I’m proud of the work that has been done in Cambridge and committed to continuing on this journey. I don’t have all the answers, but I’m confident in the work of the Equity and Inclusion Office, and I believe the Advisory Council will play an important role in shaping our path and engaging across the diverse staff and community that makes up this incredible city.

City Operations

Oversee effective delivery of resident services including day-to-day operations, maintaining city infrastructure, and major capital projects.

 

Goal	Status
Achieve compliance with established service level agreements (SLAs) for operating department requests in SeeClickFix at an 80% level or above in the top 30 request categories	Met

The City is committed to proactively providing consistent, high-quality  municipal services. These services encompass a wide range of day-to-day operations and infrastructure maintenance: managing solid waste, delivering clean drinking water, ensuring healthy parks and urban forests, maintaining effective sewer and stormwater systems, supporting high-quality transportation infrastructure, and keeping City buildings and fleet in the best condition possible. This important work is carried out by hundreds of hard-working public servants, and I am extremely grateful for their efforts each and every day to ensure Cambridge remains a wonderful place to live and work.

Residents are welcome and encouraged to request non-emergency services or to report concerns through our request management system, SeeClickFix, which can be accessed via mobile phone application or online at https://www.cambridgema.gov/SeeClickFix.  SeeClickFix supports our ability to track requests, plan work, communicate with requestors, engage in public discussion about issues, and develop data we can use to hold ourselves accountable and work toward process improvement.  Each request category has a specified service level agreement, or SLA, which sets a goal for the timeline to close out the request.  Straightforward requests have a shorter SLA (e.g, the SLA for missed trash pick up is 48 hours) while more complicated issues take longer to resolve (e.g., repairing a manhole or piece of drainage infrastructure might be expected to take up to a year).

It is the City’s goal to complete at least 80% of requests received within their designated SLA. Of the 3,053 SeeClickFix requests opened this quarter, 81% have been closed within their SLA.  During the same quarter last year, 69% were closed within their SLA. This marked improvement was achieved by using request category specific data to engage in problem-solving with departments in areas that fell below the 80% goal. Interventions that can improve responsiveness to requests can be administrative process changes, new technologies, and different operational approaches or resource deployment. It also requires honest conversations with residents about complicated requests and issues that might be beyond the useful scope of SeeClickFix and are better addressed in other forums.

Improving the regular interaction and responsiveness of these requests is an important part of our day-to-day operations, and we are looking forward to providing more detailed data for discussions with the Council in the coming weeks.

Fiscal Management

Provide effective financial management and oversight of the budget, ensuring fiscal stability while allocating resources to meet community needs.

 

Goal	Status
Implement greater City Council engagement in the budget development process, including Finance Committee meetings prior to formal submission of the budget regarding: 1) operating budget, 2) capital budget, 3) police budget, and 4) ARPA program	Met
Maintain strong fiscal position and AAA bond rating	Met
Finalize ARPA contracts and amendments with all funding obligated	Met

 

The City’s budget is one of the most important responsibilities of the City Manager and the City Council. I’ve committed to deepening Council engagement in the budget development process and this year, the FY25 Budget was submitted on April 29, discussed at all-day public hearings with the City Council on May 7 and May 14, and adopted on June 3. We also worked closely with Councilor Nolan and Councilor Pickett as Finance Co-Chairs to hold Committee meetings throughout the year, including discussions regarding the operating budget on February 28, the capital budget on March 19, the police budget on March 26, and updates on the ARPA program on March 26, and August 7.

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 universal pre-kindergarten, $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 also 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. We have also made new funding allocations in response to Council policy priorities including $490,000 to expand after-school programming, $400,000 to support the new American Freedman Commission that was passed into ordinance last December, and $250,000 for increased rental assistance to tenants at risk of eviction.

We have met our goal of maintaining a strong fiscal position and AAA bond rating, which we achieved from all three major bond rating agencies. A high bond rating is not just a financial advantage that provides us with lower borrowing costs, but also a sign that our fiscal policies and management are secure, and that the City will have the financial strength to accomplish our long-term goals.

We are also on track to finalize all our ARPA contracts and have executed amendments to allow funding to be dispersed through the extended deadline that the federal government recently provided. This has been a tremendous amount of work as Cambridge has administered our $88 million of ARPA funding with very little overhead costs through the hard work of so many people across the City Manager’s Office, Finance, Law, Human Services, Community Development, Public Works, and so much more. This has been an extraordinary opportunity to provide relief during and coming out of the pandemic and Cambridge has prioritized the community in our investments, putting the vast majority of dollars directly into the hands of our neediest residents, businesses, and nonprofits.

Finally, we are seeing a slowdown in the macroeconomic environment that needs to be factored into our budget conversations. As part of our commitment to greater transparency and Council engagement, we are starting the FY26 budget conversations even earlier. I’m thankful to Mayor Simmons for holding a Roundtable of the City Council and the School Committee on October 28 to discuss these macroeconomic trends and the City’s budget, and we presented both the challenges ahead and a recommendation that we plan to moderate our budget growth going forward. We will follow this up with Finance Committee meetings on the operating budget on November 20 and the capital budget on December 11. While we are not facing a fiscal crisis, thoughtful planning in advance will ensure that we will be prepared to manage all our critical programs and investments through whatever headwinds may arrive. And our commitment will be to do it together. 

Closing Thoughts

It’s hard not to close out this year without recognizing that we are entering a period of change and uncertainty. We have built our City’s programs, services, operations, and infrastructure on a set of values and goals set out by the Council and the community. I have sought to incorporate greater transparency, accountability, and commitment to democracy into decisions and processes across the City. In this time where people are abandoning public institutions, my hope has been to restore trust and legitimacy in our local government. Yet it’s hard not to see the coming year as a challenge to all of this.

What gives me hope is the success we have seen through the years and the confidence I have in our community. This amazing city is run by an amazing team of leaders and staff who are working every day to build a better community, from the directors running our critical programs to staff who are inspiring our children in our after-school programs. Our partners in the community are doing incredible work running nonprofits and businesses and advocacy groups that strengthen our civic fabric. Our residents are showing up, providing feedback, and engaging in our government for the people. And the City Council, which does a difficult job representing everyone across our diverse community, continues to stand 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.