Candidate Pledges Council Reform

Cambridge City Council candidate Vincent L. Dixon smiles as he says he will “bring something to this race that’s very different.”

Dixon says he has big ideas for bringing city government closer to the people, even as the voters he says he would represent leave the city due to increasing housing costs.

A central aspect of Dixon’s platform is “The New Model Charter,” a plan which would alter the current charter of the city of Cambridge and change the structure of its government.

The proposed charter would establish the office of a directly elected chief executive mayor, who would have the power to appoint nearly all appointed city officials, subject to confirmation by the City Council.

“I want to reconnect people to the government,” Dixon says.

Under Cambridge’s current Plan E form of government, the city councillors choose the mayor from among themselves in what is typically a protracted process.

“The New Model Charter” would also alter Cambridge’s voting process. Instead of the current proportional voting system which elects nine councillors from across the city, Dixon advocates a system with six at-large council members elected by proportional representation as well as nine council members directly elected from nine neighborhood districts.

Dixon’s proposal would also create a “City Cabinet” that would oversee all departments, boards and commissions of the city government.

Dixon formally submitted the charter to the City Council last summer and continues to advocate its major changes. He concedes that he does not expect to pass the proposed charter in its entirety, but says he expects that parts of the charter proposal will pass.

Dixon, who describes himself as “conservative on economic issues, and progressive on social issues,” is registered as a Republican, but is running for the City Council without a party affiliation.

He is not new to city politics, having made several runs for the City Council before. In his last run for the council, in 1999, he finished 20th out of 24 candidates.

Born in Cambridge in 1952, the Harvard Street resident has been a longtime member of the Mid-Cambridge Neighborhood Association.

Dixon, who works as a consultant,

also gives historic guided tours in Harvard Square and hosts two weekly programs on Cambridge Community Television on classical music and interviews and news in the city.

“The only difference between me and Dan Rather is his paycheck,” Dixon says wryly.

Through his campaign, Dixon says he hopes to return to a better time in Cambridge history.

Dixon says he recalls a time when Cambridge was full of “stable families and stable communities.”

But now, he says, Cambridge is a city dominated by higher-income, short-term residents. Much of his constituency has left Cambridge due to the increased cost of housing after rent control was ended by a statewide referendum in 1994, he says.

“There used to be a balance between people who lived here, people who worked here, and people who were educated here,” Dixon says.

When Dixon went into his neighborhood to campaign, he found that most residents were recent arrivals from cities all across the country, instead of Cambridge natives.

Like most council candidates, Dixon —who says he is “pro-tenant, but not anti-landlord”—would like to create more affordable housing.

Describing the city’s current Affordable Housing Trust Fund as “weak,” Dixon advocates the creation of an endowment which would provide greater funding for housing initiatives. Under Dixon’s proposal, income from the endowment would be used to support mortgages for first-time home buyers.

Dixon, who was home-schooled by his parents from kindergarten though high school and holds a master’s degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, also has ideas for major changes in education.

“You can’t have civilization without genuine education,” he says.

Dixon proposes that the City Council have greater control over education than the current state Proposition 2 1/2 requires. Instead of having the City Council simply approve or reject the School Committee’s budget, Dixon says he wants the council to be able to amend the school budget.

With the recent restructuring of Cambridge Rindge and Latin (CRLS), for example, Dixon says the School Committee has not gotten the job done.

“After a year, they still don’t have a fully developed plan,” he says.

In contrast to the restructuring plan,

he encourages more tracking in Cambridge’s public secondary education.

Dixon proposes creating several public high schools out of CRLS. Dixon says Cambridge should have a high school offering a classics curriculum including Latin and ancient Greek, one with a science-focused curriculum that would include the involvement of professors at Harvard and MIT, a high school for the performing arts, and at least one high school specializing in vocational education.

Dixon, who has twice won state Senate Republican primaries for the Suffolk and Middlesex district, says he is strongly opposed to the proposed redistricting

of Cambridge’s state representative districts.

He says the redistricting “is obviously an attempt to get back at Cambridge” after the city’s economic success and increasing population have increased its power in the state.

Expressing admiration for House Speaker Thomas M. Finneran’s leadership skills but strong disagreement with his political opinions and decisions, Dixon says, “There’s a little bit of a lie going on with the state leadership.”

The redistricting controversy is just another example, he says, of the need for a fundamental change in government.

“It’s a real problem,” Dixon says. “Government’s role is to balance interests as well as to do the right thing.”