Timed for a Change

Ex-City Manager John B. Atkinson developed a halo during his decade in office, and he deserved it. Where once aldermen grew fat from their trucking contracts with Cambridge, city officials from kickbacks, and politicians in general from the hopeless tangle of Cambridge finance, Atkinson reduced city administration to a degree of orderliness and efficiency which any modern corporation would be proud to claim.

Yet, something like Joe Louis, Atkinson stayed on too long. As the city functioned more and more like a precision machine, he began to spend most of his time at his shoe factory--still drawing his full salary of $20,000--and even city councillors had trouble seeing him. During his last few years as manager, government took on all the characteristics of a Boston counting house, and demands for slum clearance, better roads, additional parking space, and better schools have been ignored. It was a case of Business-Like Government gone to seed.

For all of this, Atkinson's halo kept shining long after its wearer's usefulness ended. Thus, when the Council ousted Atkinson, the Boston Herald lamented, "John J. Curry (the new manager) will begin his term under a cloud. . ." There were many others in the chorus of indignation. To them, Atkinson was not simply a reformer, he was reform itself, and it mattered little if his was the kind that measures progress only in terms of a decreasing tax-rate.

Happily, two Cambridge Civic Association city councillors, Crane and Deguglielmo, had long since adjusted their eyesight to the halo's glare. As politicians, they knew far better than the despairing Herald that efficiency and honesty are no more than first steps to good government. Happily, too, the man they helped elect has equally keen eyes.

Besides realizing that Cambridge needs a program of improvements--from new schools to revised zoning laws--Curry, thanks to a number of years as administrator of Boston Latin and other schools, has enough ability to push it through. Although he is not too well versed in local politics and inherits a split CCA and a split City Council, he is shrewd enough to avoid serious trouble. His main problem is rising costs--a problem, it seems, that afflicts all governments save the Federal variety--and regrettably he is not noted as a particularly brilliant financeer.

At the very least, though, Curry enters office aware of his city's requirements, and that is an improvement. Perhaps he will never gain a halo, but in his own way he will probably do as much for Cambridge as his predecessor.