Fourth-Generation Cantabrigian Calls for More Town-Gown Communication

Lawrence J. Adkins spent the winter of his senior year of high school working with friends at the Harvard Square Coop, minding the dressing rooms and washing floors.

“It was a good time,” he reminisces. “To be truthful, they were very good days.”

For the fourth-generation Cantabrigian, this is only one chapter in a life marked by interaction with the University.

As a teen in the 1970s, Adkins watched his father battle Harvard’s encroachment into their neighborhood. Adkins, too—now a first-time candidate for City Council—cut his political teeth as the president of the Riverside Neighborhood Association, representing residents in their struggle against Harvard’s latest expansion in the area.

Adkins’s candidacy reflects his worries that the council did not adequately consider residents’ needs during the negotiations. The University reached a last-minute deal with the council in October 2003, receiving permission to develop graduate student housing in Riverside in return for providing community benefits. Residents say the closed-door negotiation process left them little time to weigh in on the result.

“It’s never a completely transparent process,” says Alan Joslin, who worked with Adkins as a neighborhood representative and now serves with him on a committee overseeing the implementation of the agreement.

“It’s never clear why we were able to move Harvard in one issue and not in the other,” Joslin adds. “We probably don’t know all the content of the conversation.”

Adkins argues that this lack of communication is a systemic problem for the council—one exemplified by the controversy that erupted last year when many residents’ property tax bills skyrocketed after the city conducted its regular reassessment.

“I have never, ever [before] seen a resident of Cambridge have to sell their home because they couldn’t afford the taxes of the city,” Adkins says. “I still don’t believe that all was done, nor do I believe that all is being done.”

In an election season in which all nine incumbents are running for reelection, Adkins—whose campaign slogan is “What I know, you will know”—has promised change.

Joslin says that this approach is consistent with the man he worked with during negotiations with Harvard.

“He was a wonderful spokesperson for residents. He gave eloquent, emotional presentations that really got to the heart of these kinds of concerns,” he recalls.

‘MONEY OPERATION’

Adkins’ platform boasts an ambitious set of goals, from terminating the current city manager’s contract to abolishing the tax exemption for Cambridge’s two large universities, Harvard and MIT.

While the universities, as nonprofit institutions, do not have to pay property taxes, they both make a voluntary payment to the city each year, in lieu of taxes. But Adkins attributes the city’s financial woes to the loss of taxes from these two large landowners, and argues that charging them would lessen the burden on residents.

Nor does Adkins, who graduated from the former Rindge Technical High School, spare the school system from criticism. He advocates that the council reorient the direction of its money toward elementary school classrooms and away from administration.

“Education is a money operation in this town,” he asserts. “We should enter into this conversation with a bill in hand, already equated, and respectfully say to them what the city says to residents: If you can’t pay it, the city solicitor will be in touch with you.”

Adkins has also called for the termination of the city manager’s contract. The city manager, appointed by the City Council, oversees the day-to-day operation of the city while the mayor has a more ceremonial role. The current city manager, Robert W. Healy, has been in office since 1980.

FAMILY MATTERS

Adkins says his decision to run for a seat on the council was complicated by family responsibilities. As the single parent of two sons, Adkins accompanies his 24-year-old to dialysis treatment for kidney disease multiple times a week.

But he says a large family network in Cambridge enabled him to seize the opportunity.

“I’m going to take care of my own first and foremost—but when I can’t, somebody can step in and keep me informed. I have a great family,” he says with satisfaction.

In 1990, Adkins opened a small restaurant on Western Avenue with his mother and brother. Although the restaurant has since closed, the family continues to own the laundromat next door.

Adkins has also worked as a foreman at Boston Insulated Wire and Cable and as an employee of the Cambridge Recreation Department, serving as associate director of the Hoyt Teen Center.

“At the Teen Center I got a real good flavor of my own community,” he recalls, saying that the position sparked his interest in city affairs.

DOOR-TO-DOOR

In order to win, Adkins must unseat one of the members of a council that has remained unchanged for the last two election cycles.

Adkins and his staff maintain that the campaign is going well, pointing to widespread support in the Riverside neighborhood and the connections Adkins has formed by founding the Cambridge Town Meeting Association and serving on the board of the Association of Cambridge Neighborhoods.

“I think he’s had aspirations for this position for quite some time,” Joslin says. “And he’s been building his qualifications for quite a while.”

Still, the pace of his campaign slowed earlier this fall when its manager, Alan Dobson, who also works for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, relocated to the Gulf Coast to help with recovery efforts after Hurricane Katrina.

“You learn your first time out, so there are some things we would definitely do differently,” says Campaign Co-Chair Irene Hartford. “Lawrence didn’t really get into the race until the last minute. It would have been better to have more time—we would have come out with our literature and website sooner.”

But she reports that requests for yard signs have been strong.

And, with Election Day approaching on Tuesday, Adkins says he will be soliciting votes up to the last minute.

“My days [consist of] going door-to-door. I’m on the telephone,” he says. “I’m just going to be out and about more than anybody else.”

—Staff writer Natalie I. Sherman can be reached at nsherman@fas.harvard.edu.