Council Settles Houghton School Relocation Fight

The Cambridge City Council agreed late Monday night to settle at last the Houghton School controversy by appropriating $100,000 to buy 16 portable classrooms.

The Classrooms will be located on properly owned jointly by Harvard and the Archidiocese of Boston on De wolfe St. just across form Quincy House.

The portable classrooms will be used for two years during the construction of the $4 million Martin Luther King Jr Elementary School.

The Houghton School district is in an area includes a large black population as well as Harvard married students living in Peabody Terrace.

Horsing Around

Black community leaders have accused the City Council of "horsing around" and stalling the construction of a new school. The Council originally argued that it could not build a new school because there was no place to put present Houghton students.

Harvard, however, offered the City use of either the Business School soccer filed or the DeWolfe Street site for portable classrooms on May 9.

To begin the new King School the council appropriated @320,000 for land-taking for the building. Acting City Managers Ralph J. Dunphy said that the land-taking could run as high as $700,000.

The $100,000 appropriation for the classrooms involved a transfer from funds slated for the City Hospital. The final Council vote on the matter was 7.2.

Rods

In other action, Vice Mayor Alfred Evellucci threatened to picket the next meeting of the water board at the Hotel Continental with a group of fishing enthusiasts because the board banned fishing in Fresh Pond.