ABSENTEE LANDLORDS

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

... Your inference in a recent editorial that independent candidates in the coming Cambridge election are not interested in good government is false. Your statement that "It (the Cambridge Civic Association) has screened all candidates" is likewise false.... Your use of the present tense concerning "dedication to good government" on the part of the CCA might better have been rendered in the past tense.

The last statement leads us to consider the CCA historically even though that history is short. Fifteen years ago a group of prominent and distinguished Cantabridgians formed a reform organization called the CCA. It promulgated many interesting plans, surveys, studies, etc., usually during election years, some of which were later implemented. Its first political victory was won with the aid of obliging landlords, many of them absentee landlords, who inserted pink slips with their rent bills warning tenants that their rents would increase greatly if the CCA slate were not elected.

Since then the native element in the CCA has lost interest for one reason or another, so that today, fifteen years later, only 26 percent of the CCA's policy-making governing and managerial board are Cambridge residents.

I submit that such a policy-making body scarcely represents a proper democratic cross-section of our community. Nor can it be said to offer the greatest benefit to all the people of the City of Cambridge. Benedict Fitzgerald '08   (independent Candidate for Cambridge City Council)