Pomp and Whine

New England Journal of Higher Education, The, Winter 2005 by Born, Kathleen Leahy

Here's where the discomfort occurs: all the positive effects of the strong economy were beginning to spin out of control, and elected officials were hearing about it loud and clear. The high cost of housing (rents and taxes) was making the city inaccessible to long-time residents. New development was replacing older smaller buildings and changing the historic look and feel of the urban texture. Traffic generated by a new development was choking city streets. Locally owned retail establishments were being replaced by familiar national chain stores. Now, there were too many places to buy latte.

Each year, the universities would present their "Town-Gown" reports to the City Council. I secretly called these the "pomp and whine" meetings. The VP for government affairs would enumerate all the ways the city should be grateful for what the university does. Elected officials, not to be outdone by one another in front of the local press, would take turns dressing down the VP for the university's failure to ease high cost of housing, for not stopping development, that exacerbates the traffic, for not subsidizing with low rents the little retail businesses which carry such sentimental value, for not making payments in lieu of taxes that really reflected the actual value of their properties.

Cambridge, like a lot of college towns, was experiencing a "benefit boomerang."

To be fair, things have changed, slowly, since my first uncomfortable sit-down in 1993. There have been some real, if carefully calculated, gestures of generosity on the part of the universities: the below-market value sale to the city of 100 units of formerly rent-controlled housing, a $10 million low-interest loan program for affordable housing, a shelter for homeless drug abusers, several lovely parks, a tangible increase in on-campus student housing to ease the citywide housing crunch and a recent landmark tax agreement occasioned by one university's controversial purchase of a large piece of prime commercial property.

Contrary to the cynicism of the constituent who accused me of blackmail, universities in Cambridge now accept that to get major projects built in the city, they have to offer some tangible benefit in the form of a donation of real estate, a park, help with funding for an educational or social service program or, at the minimum, just plain payments in lieu of taxes.

Intermittent rumblings in places like Madison Wis., Palo Alto, Calif., and closer to home in Providence, have raised the tax-exemption issue as it relates to research buildings. In Connecticut, cities are reimbursed by the state for some of the taxes institutions don't pay. Perhaps with Harvard's unprecedented major expansion planned in Boston's Allston neighborhood, there will finally be the resolve to make fundamental changes in state law that could offer Massachusetts cities compensation for tax revenue unrealized when universities expand.

Sim City has changed in the last decade too. The 2004 version, Sim City 4, places far greater value on the contentment of the "Sims," the people who live there, and less value on continued growth. Quality of life is now equally or more important to the success of the city than its rate of growth. This quality of life theme, played out in various guises-affordable housing to ensure diversity, affordable commercial rents to support small businesses, less traffic, less noise, preservation of historic buildings and open spaces-has moved front and center in Cambridge politics.