New City Council Endures a Chaotic Year

... In the beginning and the end--and much of the middle--there was politics.

There were also the perennial issues of housing and rent control, crime in the streets, and transportation.

(Our city editor wrote this piece before he left for San Francisco, and before Alflorence Cheatham, a black, was named Cambridge's superintendant of schools.)

ACCORDING TO THE EYE of the beholder, in this case the Crimson, news in Cambridge this year was dominated by politics--a favorite topic in this City. But there were also the perennial issues of housing and rent control, crime in the streets, and transportation.

On the environmental front, conservationists could claim a victory in the six-month transformation of Brattle Street from a noisy, polluted area of the Square into a pedestrian mall. But they suffered defeat near the river as the Metropolitan District Commission prevailed in its plans to sacrifice several trees along the Charles to the construction of a new sewer.

In that area which Newsweek delicately calls "Transition," three deaths saddened the Harvard community. A physician from California was murdered three blocks from Mather House; the former manager of the Club Casablanca was shot and killed in his own establishment; and the founder of Cahaly's Market died of cancer at age 69.

BUT IN THE BEGINNING and the end--and much of the middle--there was politics. The first rumblings were from students who felt they were being harassed and illegally denied their right to register and vote in Cambridge, Clerks in the Cambridge Election Commission seemed to vary from day to day on what constituted proof of residency: some students were required to present phone bills or a lease and prove that they were self-supporting, while others joined the voting rolls merely by having a Massachusetts driver's license. Adding to the confusion, there was uncertainly about whether state law required six-months' residency or a full year for voting eligibility.

By the time the registration rolls were closed prior to the November election, less than 1000 of Cambridge's 18,000 out-of-state students were registered. On the other hand, 6000 new voters had been added to the rolls since January, the great majority of them young people.

In the City elections, five candidates endorsed by the Cambridge Civic Association won seats on the City Council. It was only the second time since 1953 that liberals had gained control of the Council. And in the School Committee election, CCA liberals won three of six places, creating a situation in which reform-minded Mayor Barbara Ackermann could break the tie in favor of the liberals. The Mayor of Cambridge is permitted to vote in both the City Council and the School Committee.

A TOP ISSUE in the fall campaigns was the quality of chief City personnel. The liberals elected to the Council had all promised that one of their first actions in office would be to dismiss incumbent City Manager John H. Corcoran. The liberal five argued that Corcoran had appointed mediocre people to important City positions and that he lacked the drive and imagination necessary to work with the Council in instituting long needed reform programs. In the type of city government that Cambridge has, the City Manager has the power to fill vacant City posts and draw up the budget.

The five Council liberals embarked on a nation-wide search for a new City Manager, sifting through hundreds of applications. After six months and more than $8000 in City funds, the hunt has narrowed down to two candidates: Howard C. (Neil) Peterson, the white former City Administrator of New Brunswich, N.J., and James Johnson, the black Deputy City Manager of Kansas City, Mo, and the former City Manager of Compton, Calif.

BUT THE MEMBERS of the liberal majority are unable to agree on one of these two men, and since the four independents who were reelected to the Council in November are satisfied with Corcoran, no change has been made. Unfortunately, the issue is now clouded by ugly racial overtones. Although Peterson twice won the endorsement of community leaders who interviewed the finalist candidates, Henry F. Owens III, a black lawyer endorsed by the CCA and elected in the fall, has charged that his liberal colleagues are ignoring the better qualifications of his candidate, Johnson, simply because he is black. Yet one of Owens's fellow liberals is Saundra Graham, a black community organizer from the Riverside section of the City. Graham is primarily interested in Corcoran's immediate retirement, and she has voted for both Peterson and Johnson.

Owens has shown little willingness to compromise so far. Ackermann and the two other liberals--Francis H. Duehay '55 and Robert Moncreiff--are firm in their stand behind Peterson. So Corcoran continues in his position as City Manager, probably finding it difficult to suppress guffaws at the liberals' fratricide. And Graham and many citizens of Cambridge wonder what they did to deserve this mess.

ATTENTION WAS FOCUSED on the School Committee in January when the Committee's liberal coalition carried out its campaign promise to dismiss Frank J. Frisoli '35, the Superintendent of Cambridge schools. The liberals accused Frisoli of incompetence and criticized the previous School Committee for appointing Frisoli as Superintendent without consulting a citizens' group that had been set up to interview qualified candidates.

Frisoli had numerous supporters however, and the controversy climaxed with a stormy, seven-hour meeting at Rindge Tech High School Auditorium. About 2000 people crowded into the hall, most of them pro-Frisoli. The session was interrupted periodically by fistfights, a bomb scare, and continual chanting and clapping. Frisoli termed his opponents "educational deviates and radicals" and at one point he became incensed at an anti-Frisoli speech. He raced to the front of the stage, where he called the departing speaker--a representative of the Cambridge Chamber of Commerce--"the biggest weasel that ever hit this town." An unidentified man from the audience then began striking the Chamber of Commerce representative, but the fight was quickly broken up by Cambridge Police.

Finally at 2:30 a.m., the Committee voted, 4-2, with one abstention, not to renew Frisoli's contract as Superintendent. This decision provoked a rash of small fires, false alarms and bomb scares in the Cambridge public schools the following day. Frisoli's supporters vowed that they would take the issue to the people in a referendum. Although "Citizens for Frisoli" gathered 12,396 signatures--more than the 12 per cent of eligible voters necessary to make the School Committee reconsider its decision--the Committee again voted to oust Frisoli, by a vote of 4-3, and the City Council refused to put the matter to a test in a referendum in the April primary.

AFTER A NATIONAL search similar in scope to the one launched to find a new City Manager, the School Committee has narrowed down its list of candidates for Superintendent to two men: Medill Bair, the white superintendent of the Hartford, Conn., school system and Aflorence Cheatham, a black district superintendent in Chicago. Although Bair has been offered a substantial salary raise for his Hartford job, he is still open to an offer from Cambridge. If Bair is unable to fill the post here. Cheatham will almost certainly get the job.

School Committee vice chairman David A. Wylie, in a statement made to the Cambridge Chronicle last week, said that there is a connection between the deadlocks over the appointment of a new City Manager and school Superintendent. Wylie charged certain politicians have agreed that either the new manager or new superintendent must be black. He added that he did not think the black community intended this to happen. Wylie supports Bair, but Mayor Ackermann and Charles M. Pierce, the black liberal on the School Committee, favor Cheatham. Peter G. Gesell, the fourth member of the liberal majority on the Committee, appears to be neutral.

There is speculation that if Cheatham manages to win the job of superintendent, then Owens will relent and vote for Peterson for City Manager. Perhaps the liberal majorities on both the City Council and the School Committee will work better together once they have agreed upon replacements for these two vitally important City positions, but until then the liberals' paralysis is exposed to the City.

IN OTHER BRIEFLY noted news in Cambridge during the past academic year:

*Brattle Street from Brattle Square to Church Street was closed to traffic for six months, beginning in late September. Potted plants and colored dots painted on the street decorated the new mall. But area businessmen claimed that their stores were suffering a lack of patronage, and the experiment ended after the City Council voted to reopen Brattle Street to traffic pending further transportation studies of the area;

*The Metropolitan District Commission (MDC) cut down 18 maple trees on the bank of the Charles River on November 23 to make way for the construction of a sewer. The move came as a shock to most Cambridge residents, and an immediate outcry temporarily saved the remaining 13 trees. John W. Sears '52, MDC Commissioner, halted the destruction when it was shown that most of the remaining trees were not "sick or dying" as he had contended. But on February 7, Sears said, "We can no longer hold the axes up, we've got to begin work if we are going to finish the project on time." The MDC promised to replace the maple trees with 18-foot-tall sycamore trees as soon as the project was completed;

*At its final meeting on December 29, the lameduck City Council voted to end rent control in Cambridge. Liberal members of the new Council obtained a court order that prevented City officials from closing the rent control administration and questioned the legality of the order to abolish it. On January 10, the new City Council restored rent control by a 6-2 margin and created a five-member Rent Control Board in place of an Administrator:

*The body of Dr. Clarence D. Bensen, 41, chief of the obstetrics and gynecology department at Mercy General Hospital in Sacramento, Calif., was discovered in an alley three blocks away from Mather House on October 23. Bensen was apparently the victim of robbery. A week later a suspect was charged with the slaying that a Cambridge detective described as "brutal and macabre."

*On January 29 Govert K. van Schaik '62, manager and part owner of the Club Casablanca on Brattle Street, was shot and killed in an altercation at the bar. The assailant later turned himself into the police.

*Finally, Raphael (Ralph) Cahaly, founder of Cahaly's Harvard Square market and one of the area's most popular merchants, died of cancer on February 15. A native of Damascus, Syria, Cahaly came to this country more than 40 years ago and opened a small variety store with three of his brothers on the corner of Boylston and Mt. Auburn Streets. The store changed locations twice before finally coming to rest at its present address of 47 Mt. Auburn St. Cahaly's son John now manages the store. As a final tribute, Cahaly's funeral procession drove down Mt. Auburn St, and stopped briefly in front of the store to which Cahaly had devoted so much of his life's energy.