Cambridge City Manager Yi-An Huang Says City Should Streamline Commissions

City Manager Yi-An Huang ’05 said Cambridge should streamline its sprawling network of boards and commissions, saying the city has an opportunity to reassess how the bodies are structured and whether they still reflect current needs.

In a Wednesday interview with The Crimson, Huang said Cambridge has not recently conducted a comprehensive review of its roughly 50 boards and commissions — which range from the Veterans Advisory Committee to the Peace Commission — despite their central role in involving residents in local decision-making.

“In general, our boards and commissions work well, but I think there’s always room to strengthen some of those practices,” Huang said. “We’re looking to make sure there’s more support and more consistency.”

Huang emphasized that the effort is not driven by budget concerns, even as the city faces declining revenue for the first time in decades.

“This is less budget related,” he said. “This is more just recognizing that we have a lot of boards and commissions and we haven’t gone and reviewed all of them.”

Instead, he framed the push as a broader effort to improve consistency, support, and effectiveness across the system.

Some commissions, Huang argued, may no longer be structured in a way that makes sense. He pointed to the Veterans Advisory Committee, which operates under the city’s Veterans Service Department and helps residents who have served or are serving in the U.S. Armed Forces access federal benefits. The committee has 38 seats and has not met regularly.

“It doesn’t make a lot of sense that there are 38 seats,” he said.

Others, he said, have evolved far beyond their original purpose. The Peace Commission — created to prepare for the possibility of “overt nuclear war” — now organizes events such as Holocaust Memorial Day, Martin Luther King Day, and Meet Your Neighbor Days.

“It’s a mission that I think is worth revisiting and re-envisioning,” Huang said.

The city has already taken initial steps, including restructuring several diversity-related commissions and laying off seven staff members in November — a move that drew criticism from the City Council over a lack of transparency.

Huang said future changes will involve more input from both councilors and commission members.

“We’re going to go back to the councilors and say ‘this is how we’re thinking about the work.’ And then we would engage with the members of the boards and commissions to get their thoughts and input, and ultimately, try to do that in a more engaged way,” he said.

After the Covid-19 pandemic, the city experienced a slowdown in reappointments to boards and commissions. Now that the process has resumed, Huang said the city is well positioned to take a broader look at how the bodies function.

“We’re hoping to bring something to the City Council, probably in the coming months, with a bigger picture of what this might look like,” Huang said.

—Staff writer Maya Fu can be reached at [email protected].

—Staff writer Risha Sinha can be reached at [email protected].