The Cambridge City Council yesterday returned to the leisurely existence of antebellum.

As the dispute between former city manager John J. Curry '19 and the present manager Joseph A. DeGuglielmo went to the courts, the Council occupied itself with the routine tasks and its next major business: the proposed Inner Belt Expressway.

The nine councillors, joined by Cambridge's state representatives, met informally with traffic consultants hired by the city. The consultants presented their recommendation of an alternative to the Brookline-Elm St. route for the Inner Belt, the route that is favored by the state. This route cuts a wide path through Cambridge only several blocks east of Central Square.

The alternative suggested by the consultants would run along railroad tracks in East Cambridge near M.I.T. Selecting this route would cut the number of families displaced by the roadway from about 500 to 422, the consultants said. The job loss would be reduced from 1579 to 1409.

A major drawback of the railroad route is that it would claim a significant number of M.I.T. laboratories. However, the consultants were not asked to choose be- tween the Brookline-Elm St. route and the railroad location; their assigned task was merely to find an alternative to Brookline-Elm that would limit job and residential displacement.

Thomas Coates, chairman of the Council's special committee on the Inner Belt, set a public hearing at 7 p.m. in the Wellington School in East Cambridge.

In its public session, the Council met for a mere 22 minutes. Councillor Alfred E. Vellucci tried to slip by his colleagues a motion calling for a 10 per cent raise in all city salaries. Mrs. Cornelia B. Wheeler weakened the motion by changing its wording.

Earlier in the day, the major participants of the DeGuglielmo-Curry fight appeared in the Middlesex Superior Court. Arguments on two major points involved in the dispute were postponed until Thursday. It appeared that all the major issues would be combined and sent to the Massachusetts Judicial Court for determination.

The court will have to decide on three major issues: whether DeGuglielmo is eligible to become manager; whether the Council removed Curry under the proper law; and whether DeGuglielmo can waive his state pension and thereby qualify to receive the city manager's salary