Legislature Acts

City Manager government was in use in Cambridge before the Lyons trial was over.

Until 1938 any duly incorporated city could choose its own form of government as it pleased at the time of its incorporation. Over a period of years so many various types of charters were issued that Massachusetts courts were clogged with litigation involving misunderstandings between citizens of municipalities and the citizens themselves.

To help clear up the situation, the legislature limited new municipalities to a choice of five kinds of charters, labeling the types Plans A, B, C, D and E. Under the 1938 law already incorporated cities could change their charter to one of these by ballot, if they wished. Only Boston, which has a government similar to that outlined in Plan B was denied this privilege.

A group of Cambridge residents, aiming for elimination of graft and better administration through change of government formed a Plan E committee. To get a referendum on the change, they secured the required 10,000 signatures on a petition before election in 1939.

The Committee was unsuccessful, however, in the first election; not until 1940, on a second try, was Plan E voted as the new charter. A 7,500 majority, carrying all but three of the city's 11 wards, made Cambridge the first city in Massachusetts to use the new plan. In 1941 the first election employing Plan E was held. The successful candidates moved into office January, 1942.

New Plan In Action

Plan E provides that the city council and school committee be elected by proportional representation. Instead of choosing one candidate in a ward, the voter rates candidates in order of preference with first place votes, of course, counting highest in tabulation.

After the elected Council convenes, it elects a mayor from among its members, who serves mainly as titular head of the council, presiding over meetings, and representing the city at birthdays, weddings, funerals and affairs of state. As real director of the municipality, the Council appoints a city manager, who may be anyone the nine chooses to select.

Responsible only to the entire council, the manager may be removed only by that group. He directs all city affairs and can request that measures be passed by the councilmen. And, from his executive position he is directly responsible for the welfare of the city. Opponents of Plan E can find nothing wrong with this--they base all their arguments on the Proportional Representation article of the charter.

The Council chose as its first City Manager, John B. Atkinson, retired Army colonel, shoe manufacturer, and part-time politician. Atkinson made it his first business to whittle down the oversized City payroll.

Overlapping departments under the old Plan B charter and caused doubling on single jobs and padding employees of the independent staffs. Atkinson, to avoid the unpleasantness of wholesale firing, reduced the size of the city staff by waiting for city employees to retire or leave. The vacated posts were then abolished. Most recent statistics on City employment put the Cambridge staff at about 2000 employers--approximately 1000 fewer than were drawing pay checks in 1941.

CCA cheerfully pointed to the employment reduction as an example of the efficiency of the new regime. The independents, less happy about Atkinson, warned that the City Manager was depleting the ranks of important City services for the sake of economy. For instance the current police roster numbers 214 men while a troop of 235 is recommended by the Cambridge police ordinance.

Better Civil Service

Atkinson next turned his attention towards job appointments. Since he was not in office through votes, he could ignore the usual political necessity of patronage and favoritism. All civil service jobs were filled under Atkinson according to grades received by job applicants on civil service examinations.