Word: cda
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Racked by power plays from all sides the agency is hopelessly caught in the midst of forces it cannot deal with. The local residents on the Model Cities board, who exercise at least nominal control over Cities Demonstration Agency (CDA) activities in Cambridge, are angrily, and for the first time, effectively pressing for more power in the decision-making process. The staff, conceived as the working arm to implement board proposals, is divided, confused, and idle. The City Manager in City Hall, wielding his ever-ready veto power, is anxiously awaiting the imminent collapse of the program. And perhaps most...
Cambridge Model Cities' internal political woes first became public in November when 75 staff and board members marched to a sit-in at City Hall to confront City Manager John Corcoran for his inaction on important CDA matters. The issues-two negotiated contracts and a pay raise-were never satisfactorily resolved, but the incident clarified the roles of various parties in a drama that has significance far beyond the 16,000 residents of the Cambridge model neighborhood...
...conservatives in City Hall, in the City Council, and in various other centers of power, see it as a burden rather than an advantage to tack the bill for additional services onto the already strained city budget. To avoid the onus of deleting established and popular services when federal CDA money dries up in 1974, these fiscal conservatives have chosen to clamp down now, by effectively shutting off old programs and enlarging the veto power to prevent new ones...
...CDA staff should have gone into the community long ago, and it is ironic that only in a desperate attempt to save its life is it fulfilling the purpose for which it was set up. Had there been the type of community interaction originally envisioned, the present crisis might have been averted...
...tragedy of the situation is the bleakness of the future. By trying to rally support, and by forcing the issue, the CDA only hastens the inevitable final showdown. And when that confrontation comes, the City Solicitor and the City Manager can legally opine them right out of existence...