Word: velluccis
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Cambridge City Council may grab the headlines in the city's government, and Mayor Alfred E. Vellucci may seize the spotlight, but the man who fine tunes the city's affairs is much less a public character. One city councilor is working as an administrator at Tufts, another earns a living as a security guard and a third recently left a job as a state tax collector. But it's City Manager James L. Sullivan who runs the city full-time...
Sullivan's specialty is not pulling strings to win votes and influence people. While Vellucci works to keep his name in the public eye and good food in the stomachs of his supporters, Sullivan plays the cautious, unsensational business executive, trying to rein in municipal spending, draw in more federal funds and clamp down on the city's carefully-watched property tax rate...
...That was all politics, "Mayor Vellucci says now, as though that is a game he does not play. But Vellucci, a veteran of the city council since 1955, was in the fray with the rest. Whenever alliances shifted, there was a new man administering the city's affairs...
Sullivan had one stint as city manager during that time of changes, but he only lasted from 1968 to 1970. The council, with the support of present Councilors Vellucci, Daniel I. Clinton and Thomas W. Danehy, ousted him in June 1970 over many objections. Cambridge residents crowded into the council chambers to protest the move at a hearing required by the city charter, and former Harvard President Nathan M. Pusey '28 joined with the then-president of MIT to send a telegram to the nine councilors stating, "Now, as never before, we need stability and continuity in the administrative branch...
Sullivan's record has been solid, and the council now backs him firmly, recognizing the importance of stability. For three years running Sullivan has pushed down the city's property tax rate, and Vellucci, one of the five councilors who voted Sullivan out of office in 1970, now stands squarely behind him. Sullivan has gotten developers to invest in the historically bleak area of Kendall Square in East Cambridge, and Vellucci says that under Sullivan's leadership Cambridge is doing as well as any city in Massachusetts at pulling down federal money to boost the city economy...