John Pitkin enters Cambridge City Council race

JOHN PITKIN ENTERS 2003 RACE FOR CAMBRIDGE CITY COUNCIL

June 20 - John Pitkin of 18 Fayette Street, Cambridge, today announced he will be a candidate for the City Council in 2003. He has been a leader on a broad range of civic issues in Cambridge for three decades.

“I’m running for City Council because Cambridge, like every local government in the country, is facing serious new threats to services and quality of life, due to the policies of the Bush Administration - and I believe I can use my experience to help preserve the things we all value about Cambridge.” said Pitkin. “The threats range from stark cuts in services, programs, and aid, to painfully unfunded policies like the perversely named “No Child Left Behind” mandate, to the Bush Administration’s persistent inaction on the stalled economy. If current national policies continue, every function, every program is potentially at risk.”

“In this situation, to keep Cambridge a good place for a diverse mix of people to live and raise families, our government must be creative and united. It also needs to tap its greatest resource: the abilities, knowledge, and energies of citizens and civic organizations, from parent groups and neighborhood associations to labor unions and churches. To cite one example, the way the school consolidation plan was handled clearly did not succeed in doing this. We need to do much better, and I think we can.”

A resident of Mid-Cambridge for 33 years, Pitkin has played a leading role on an array of city issues, from traffic, zoning and open space to university relations.

He helped found the Mid-Cambridge Neighborhood Association in 1975, has served on the group's steering committee since its creation and served as president from 1986 to 2002. He has chaired three official citywide bodies: the Democratic City Committee, the Cambridge Transportation Forum, and the Cambridge Board of Traffic and Parking.

In 1997 Pitkin became a leading advocate of a campaign for growth management through citywide rezoning, designed to curb growth, encourage more housing, and maintain open space. Key parts of the Pitkin Petition were adopted by the City Council, setting in motion the first comprehensive, citywide rezoning in decades.

He was a candidate for City Council and narrowly missed winning a seat in the 2001 election.

Other highlights of Pitkin’s community service include:

Co-chairing the Community Advisory Committee of the Cambridge Hospital, which negotiated an agreement between the hospital and its neighbors during the facility’s recent expansion;
Organizing two multi-neighborhood forums on Harvard Expansion and the future of Cambridge’s neighborhoods, in 1990 and 2002;
Initiating a successful effort to bring back a vital neighborhood food market, the Broadway Marketplace, in the early 1990s;
Serving on the organizing committee of the Coalition for Cambridge, which led the successful campaign to override the Proposition 2 ½ property tax cap in 1982.

A professional demographer, Pitkin is president of Analysis and Forecasting, Inc., a firm that does demographic analysis and research located in Harvard Square. Pitkin and his wife, Helina, are the parents of two grown daughters, Mirja and Kaari, both graduates of the Cambridge public schools. He holds a bachelor's degree in economics from Columbia University and also studied economics at Oxford University in England.

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PRESS RELEASE June 20, 2003
CONTACT: John Pitkin at 617-492-4035 or by email to jpitkin@theworld.com