Word: craning
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...fired was City Manager Joseph A. DeGuglilmo '29 dismissed last January by five members of the City Council, led by Edward A. Crane. DeGuglielmo left the manager's office last January in the same way he entered it two years before--in a bitter battle in the Council. In 1966, DeGuglielmo, a former mayor of the City, rounded up five votes on the council to dismiss John J. Curry '19, who, with the close counsel of Crane, had served as manager for 13 years. During the next two years, the council minority led by Crane sniped away at DeGuglielmo...
...good government" Cambridge Civic Association, extracted an "agreed memorandum" from the other four anti-DeGuglielmo councillors. They pledged themselves to a 90-day nation-wide search for a "professional" City manager. Besides Mahoney, only one other member of the five--Barbara Ackermann -- enthusiastically favored the search. The other three--Crane, Alfred E. Vellucci, and Thomas W. Danehy--reportedly went along with the memorandum as the price of getting rid of DeGuglielmo...
...pole, Ackermann and Mahoney stand firm for hiring a "professional" City Manager--probably from outside of Cambridge--to run the City. At the other pole, Danehy and Vellucci loudly proclaim their intention to hire someone versed in the rough and tumble of Cambridge government for the job. Crane, with a master politician's instinct for the middle, stays silent, but is thought to strongly prefer a manager with a Cambridge background polished with professional training--someone like his old friend Curry, who was a headmaster of a local school before appointment to the manager's post...
...charter is supposed to set policy for the City, usually doesn't even do that. The direction of the City's government is set either by the manager himself, as it was in the DeGuglielmo regime, or by one councillor with the ear of the manager--a role which Crane fulfilled skillfully during the Curry administration. At present, Crane appears to be developing the same sort of close working relationship with Dunphy. An arrangement like this probably necessary if the City...
...topic in the Council chambers. During Curry's last four years in office, it remained stable at about $72 per $1000 assessed valuation, and was once even slightly reduced. By DeGuglielmo's second year in office, it stood at $82.50. During the last election campaign, advertisements of Crane and Danehy supporters in particular hit the rising taxes, and promised a return to the stability of the Curry years. The tax rate became one of the few City-wide issues in Cambridge political annals, and probably contributed to the defeat of the two DeGuglielmo supporters...