Word: atkinsons
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Curry's appointment materialized swiftly after a majority of the city councillors banded together to oust the aging reform manager John B. Atkinson who began bitterly fighting council policies. "As a matter of fact," recalls Curry, "when a councillor first suggested that I take the job, I thought he was joking. It was beyond my wildest dreams of fancy." Now the man who once tutored undergraduates in languages is the $20,000-a-year manager of one of the largest cities in Massachusetts, a position nationally respected and studied by students of government everywhere...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...Atkinson still had faith in the Plan E form of government. Said he: "It is the most democratic form of municipal administration in the world. Why, I was even removed from office through its democratic process...