Newcomer Elizabeth Bisio Wants to Focus on Resident Voices in Run for City Council

Elizabeth K. Bisio said the City Council has often failed to implement ambitious plans. She’s running to lead Cambridge through “extreme change” by recentering resident voices in Council discussions.

Bisio, a former emergency room nurse and start-up founder, moved to Cambridge four years ago and believes her non-political experiences allow her to put plans into action.

Her campaign focuses on housing development and the city’s addiction crisis, which she said will require new policies to tackle.

“Cambridge is a little bit at a precipice,” Bisio said. “We had a lot of changes last year. We’ve had a lot of changes in the last couple years as far as the city, but now we kind of need to reorient around what we want to do moving forward,” she added.

Bisio took aim at the contentious upzoning to eliminate single-family zoning, which she said did not adequately take residents’ perspectives into account. She hopes to reinstate design review — a process that allows residents, especially those who live near proposed developments, to have significantly more oversight before the city approves a proposal.

“Every single person I’ve talked to is like, we absolutely need more housing, but disagrees on the how,” she said. “There’s so much diversity in urban planning across Cambridge that I think we need a plan that better respects that.”

She said the current up-zoning was not “well legislated” and will need “more guardrails and protections to make sure that we’re growing appropriately,” citing larger setbacks, solar panel protections, an increase in public green space, reinstating design review, and incentivising family units.

Bisio said that the upzoning would lead to poor quality buildings, and that “the housing stock that we are building is not going to be able to last in order to make a meaningful impact on affordable housing.”

Bisio said that current zoning is “forcing a lot of families out of Cambridge” as developers prioritize the construction of one bedroom and studio units because they are more profitable.

“Right now, we’ve incentivized affordable, but we haven’t been incentivizing family units,” she said.

Bisio is one of seven candidates endorsed by the Cambridge Citizens Coalition, which has long stood in opposition to the city’s efforts to allow larger housing developments.

The incoming City Council will take on the rezoning of corridors including Kendall Square and Mass. Ave. The Council has weighed allowing developments up to 18 stories tall along the city’s major thoroughfares, but to Bisio, it’s all about balance.

Current city policy mandates developers dedicate a portion of a new project to open space – which can include green areas, public outdoor space, and private balconies.

“Especially with tall buildings, having that green space public is even more important,” she said.

“We should increase it,” Bisio said. “Or keep the 20 percent and be that it has to be publicly accessible.”

Bisio, drawing on nearly three years of experience as a nurse, said she’s witnessed the city’s addiction crisis firsthand. She plans to address the “fragmentation” in the city’s response, and supports needle pickups, safe injection sites, and the development of a dedicated task force to refine the city’s existing support.

Bisio said she values input from citizens regardless of the issue, and said the current council is failing to value their input.

“We have one of the most engaged, educated, thoughtful constituent bases in the country, but I don’t think we’re actually engaging with them properly. They’re wanting to be engaged with and the city is like, ‘This is too messy, too hard,’” she said.

“Most people really care about Cambridge, no matter what side of the policy issue that they’re on,” she added.

—Staff writer Dionise Guerra-Carrillo can be reached at dionise.guerracarrillo@thecrimson.com.