Council Analysis

Last night's passage by the Cambridge City Council of the Public Careers Service Program marks a small victory for the Model Cities Program over the increasing national tendency to centralize city development programs.

Corcoran, in recommending that the city not pass the program and wait instead for Nixon's new Manpower Program, was proposing a move that would abet this tendency. The Manpower program that Corcoran expects Congress and Nixon to enact would take the control of local training programs out of the neighborhoods and give it instead to the mayors, where it would be subject to city bureaucratic maneuverings and political control by the Nixon administration.

By passing the Careers Program Cambridge has secured almost $200,000 in federal money that will be neighborhood controlled. Without this program the local Model Cities administration would have to be cut back in much the same way as programs of the Office of Economic Opportunity have been forced into inaction since the Nixon administration took office.