Word: craning
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Monday, the new city manager made his first extended appearance before the Council, and almost immediately the budget and the City's hiring policy became points of controversy. Councillors Edward A. Crane '35 and Alfred E. Vellucci, both opponents of DeGuglielmo's appointment, exchanged heated words with the new manager...
More significantly, however, both sides remained firm because Crane's initial analysis of the controversy was, in part, correct. Though it was not a conspiracy, the dismissal of Curry was personally as well as politically motivated. Although the five "firing" councillors did have formal access to both the mayor and the manager, they thought that Curry and Crane had rendered the Council's real power nominal. The important decisions were made by the mayor, they felt, who would uphold Curry on any issue. Whether or not this was the case--or, if it was, whether the five were as much...
First, there were the legal questions. Was the majority five proceeding correctly? Was it dismissing Curry under the proper law? Wouldn't the Council be reversed in the courts? Combined with this approach was the threat of turning Curry's dismissal into a popularity contest. The hearing, Crane claimed, would be jammed. "You won't be able to get an auditorium big enough to hold the people that want to come and will come." Still remaining was the possibility of escalating the political conflict: "Only a few torpedoes of minor size were let go till now," Crane said before...
...anti-Curry forces computed their strategy incorrectly, so did Crane and his allies. It seems likely that they expected some sort of break in the controversy. That break never came. The five, though they seemed unsure of themselves at the beginning, have not budged, and the variety of weapons that have been used against them has done more to solidify than shatter. Even prospective charges of criminal infractions of the City's charter against three of them failed to produce the pressure for compromise. Part of the reason was that many of the threats were staffs. No more than...
There were other, even more highly personalized elements: Curry's refusal to appoint Councillor Bernard Goldberg's father as city soliciter, and Councillor William Maher's brush with Crane and Curry in a dispute that followed his unsuccessful campaign in 1963. With the deep personality splits and with Crane's deep personal attachment to Curry, the prospect of compromise was slim in the beginning and almost non-existent...