Aimee Smith

Aimee Smith

The Green-Rainbow Party is committed to ten key values which include

ecological wisdom, future focus and sustainability, and social justice.  We

understand that our environment and "nature" is not something apart from us,

but includes human beings and human communities.  Our vision of ecology

considers not only preservation of the earth's finite resources, but also

how these resources are distributed among human communities today and what

will be available for generations to come.  As a city council candidate

coming from the Green-Rainbow party, I seek strategies for preservation that

will not undercut our community's diversity and where the costs are borne

most by those most able to afford them.

Aimee Smith - www.electAimee.org

1. Do you support the LEED silver standard for new buildings?

Yes. The Green Building Council does valuable work in developing and

promoting these standards.  These are complex standards and ought to be seen as

guidelines for citizen action rather than as just new bureaucratic codes.  Before we

implement any new standards, citizens, organized workers, and businesses

must understand them and have a chance to modify them.  This is a process which

would call for another  moratorium on major developments within the city.

2. Do you support tax incentives for private developers to use LEED silver

standards for building and restoration?

No. One person's tax incentive is another person's tax increase.  We are

Not starving for just any new development in Cambridge.  The emphasis should be

On regulation, rather than subsidy.

3. Would you support master planning, zoning, incentives and requirements by

the City to make shopping, laundry, schools, parks, recreation and libraries

and essential services within a ten-minute walk of residents?

Yes.

4. Would you support life-cycle costing in planning so that the cost of use,

harm, waste, and renewal is included in costing for decisions, for example

leaf removal?

Yes.  But only if it is feasible to do such a thing in one city, and

after a

full public discussion.  Green-Rainbow's recognize that not all aspects of

impact can be monetized.

5. Would you support conservation by-laws to restrict building in

one-hundred year flood plains?

Yes. There should be no further development, especially paving-over, in

flood

plain areas.

6. Should Cambridge hire an Energy Manager?

No.

7. Do you support requiring contractors to submit their plans before paving?

Yes.  But homeowners should be reasonably exempted from any such

requirements.

8. Would you support a ban on building in parks and open space?

Yes, by zoning all parks of open space.  Variances should be allowed

only for compelling public interest.

9. Do you support the current proposed tree ordinance to protect trees?

yes, provided it includes trees on the property of government and

university facilities.

10. Would you support protection of legacy trees of more than 30 inches

diameter at breast height on private and public property? Would you support

protection of trees on lot lines, where most of our city's trees live?

yes

11. Do you support incentives to enforce the current noise ordinance? Noise

level restrictions on lawn & landscaping equipment like leaf blowers?

No incentives are needed for enforcement.  Exemptions should be

available, after

public discussion, for festivals, religious and industrial uses.

12. Do you support more aggressive enforcement of the state's 5-minute

anti-idling statute, especially for buses, trucks and heavy construction

vehicles and posting the anti-idling law near schools and major

intersections?

Yes, but more aggressive but only for buses and heavy vehicles.

13. Do you support approval of shuttles?

Yes, but the number of shuttles should be limited with an eye to

increasing services

available to all.  Competititors to the MBTA should be required to carry the

general public.

In the long term, we would prefer more T buses and trains and wider T

coverage with

door-to-door shuttles for the elderly and physically disabled.

14. Do you support requiring all City funded or partially-funded vehicles

use no diesel, or have 2007 standards and requiring all the existing diesel

vehicles to use low sulfur or bio-diesel fuel and requiring all City

non-emergency vehicles have 27 mpg?

Yes.

15. Do you favor discounts/rebates for T-passes to all residents and do you

favor mandatory T-pass purchase for each parking permit?

Yes, but no mandatory T-pass purchase.  Public transport won't work

unless it

offers competitive service.  Certain streets should be reserved for buses ,

bikes

and delivery vehicles at specified hours, as has been done in other

countries.

16. Do you support shuttle service for elders, youth and all citizens

between neighborhood centers and to the new Main Library?

Yes, on a trial basis.  A private contract should be signed for a year

to see if it's cost effective.

17. Do you support elimination of the one parking place per unit requirement

if the building is within a mile or half-mile to a T stop?

Yes.  But this exemption must be coupled with a requirement for much

higher

proportions of affordable apartments and accompanied by severe height

restrictions for new office buildings.

18. Do you support tax incentives to use compact fluorescents and LEDs,

bicycles, sustainable energy sources, maintenance of large trees, reuse of

older buildings, gardens and open space and other wise environmental

strategies?

3.5 - Sometimes yes, sometimes no.  Most of these uses make sense to people

without the incentives.  You may just wind up punishing those who don't or can't

utilize the tax incentives by making them pay for those who can.  The city does not

have unlimited tax incentives to grant.

19. Do you support taxing vehicles by weight so that SUVs and vehicles would

have to cover the life cycle cost including reparation of air quality and

increased risk of danger to their passengers and those they hit?

Yes.  But this should be done at the point of production and not through

Local excise taxes.  A small increase in excise tax will not deter the wealthy,

Mostly burdening working class people.