City Council Race A Lackluster Affair

The dullest political campaign in recent Cambridge history drags to a close this week as voters head to the polls Tuesday to select nine city councilors and six members of the school committee.

Symptomatic of the political climate are the abysmally poor citizen turnouts at candidates' nights in which voters barely outnumber the candidates.

National news, especially the resignation of Elliot Richardson '41 and the firing of Archibald Cox '34, has overshadowed city politics over the last few months. But the lack of a single dramatic and divisive issue on the local level is perhaps the greatest factor in the current political malaise.

Not that the candidates haven't tried to find one.

Three weeks ago the city council spent two nights deliberating the merits of a six per cent pay raise for Cambridge police.

The police officers' union, the Cambridge Police Association, had agreed to accept the six per cent raise that the city offered to all municipal employees retroactive to January 1, 1973. Negotiations on the remainder of the agreement became snarled over the disposition of grievances under the previous contract.

In effect, city manager John H. Corcoran has refused to sign the new contract until the Police Association drops its application to the American Arbitration Association for arbitration of longevity and night differential pay.

The council's liberal faction--Robert P. Moncreiff, Francis H. Duehay '55, Saundra Graham, and Mayor Barbara Ackerman--is backing Corcoran and has voted against appropriating the pay raise until the contract is signed.

The five councilors who call themselves Independents--Walter J. Sullivan, Thomas W. Danehy, Alfred E. Vellucci, Daniel Clinton, and Henry F. Owens III--have all lined up behind the police, voting for immediate enactment of the pay raise ordinance.

Since the measure requires at least six votes to pass, it has been stymied each time it has been introduced. Not so coincidentally, the councilors who voted for the pay raise were the only incumbents to receive the endorsement of the Police Association, the first time in its five year history that the union has endorsed political candidates.

Support for the measure has failed to materialize out in the electorate as understandably few Cambridge taxpayers are enthusiastic about a move that will increase the cost of their city services.

Nevertheless, Vellucci made a valiant effort to associate the pay raise with the need for better police protection, repeatedly calling upon the council to hire 100 new patrolmen.

At one meeting Vellucci berated Police Chief James Regan, charging that patrolmen are transferred out of East Cambridge and other neighborhoods to handle traffic following Harvard football games.

"You're trying to make the people of Cambridge believe that they have ample police protection when they don't," he said.

The council later passed a statute that specifies that there be at least one foot patrolman per 10,000 inhabitants on duty at all times. Regan estimated that the measure will entail the hiring of 30 to 40 additional policemen.

Statistics recently released by the police department illustrate a consistent decline in the crime rate since 1966, defusing that issue to some extent.

Yet a third police issue this year is the appointment of a civilian police commissioner--an outgrowth of the Lawrence Largey incident last fall--and civilian review board. Candidates endorsed by the Cambridge Civic Association (CCA), the city's good government organization, and those on the Grass Roots Organization (GRO) slate, generally favor both measures.

Independents appear to be split on this issue. Some, like Donald A. Fantini, contend that the city manager effectively serves as the civilian head of the police department and that the creation of the new post would only add another layer of bureaucracy.

The actual conduct and format of the election have become major issues and promise to be more instrumental in the outcome than the standard substantive issues.

This year for the first time, prompted by Cambridge's complicated voting system of proportional representation, the Independent candidates--mostly old-style, ethnic Democrats--have banded together in a formal slate. While it is a slate in name only, with its members holding different positions on major issues, it is expected to help the conservative voter identify his kind of politicians.

The aftermath of the CCA victory two years ago disillusioned many city liberals, as the coalition fell apart with the alienation of Owens from his four CCA compatriots. The CCA candidates fulfilled their pledge to appoint a new school superintendent but failed to replace City Manager Corcoran.

This year, Saundra Graham, the council's lone radical, has broken her former ties with the CCA to run with five other radicals on the GRO slate. The GRO platform advocates the ouster of Corcoran and greater community control through police civilian review boards and a review process to oversee development.

Yet another procedural issue could influence the fate of Graham's GRO slate. The annual student registration controversy prompted at least preliminary inquiries by the state Attorney General's office this year. Many students have claimed that the city Election Commission has arbitrarily denied them the right to vote here.

Both the CCA and GRO stand to gain votes from student participation and earlier in the campaign they joined forces for a registration drive among students and non-voters.

As for substantive issues, many are of the motherhood and apple pie variety, with only slight differences in phrasing or emphasis distinguishing the supposed conservative from the avowed liberal or radical.

The following is a brief rundown of what the candidates are talking about:

TAXES--Cambridge's real property tax is the third highest in the Boston area, topped only by Boston and Chelsea. Predictably, none of the candidates advocate increased taxes, although their programs for stabilizing the present tax vary. Some favor redistribution of the tax burden within the city (for instance, the Socialist Workers Party would tax businesses while removing taxes on incomes under $15,000 or property valued at less than $30,000) or between the state and city.

Other strategies call for utilization of federal revenue sharing funds, replacement of the property tax with a sales tax, the taxing of presently exempt universities, and reduction of "waste and inefficiency" in the municipal government.

HOUSING--Everyone agrees that the city's housing supply must be upgraded. For whom and how is the question. Conservatives such as Danehy argue that the city has already built more low-income housing than it can absorb, creating a demand for city services that it cannot fulfill. Danehy wants a moratorium on public housing construction.

Others urge the use of Federal subsidy programs to rehabilitate existing structures and construct scatter-site5Cambridge Mayor Barbara Ackermann