Word: dpw
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...obscured some fundamental political realities: first, the forces against the highway were themselves splintered and not nearly so strong as they appeared; and second, there were many interests--mostly silent interests--which desperately wanted the highway to go down Brookline-Elm. The opposing forces neutralized each other. Once the DPW got around to picking the Cambridge segment of the highway, it could really heavily on engineering and traffic criteria, and by those standards, the DPW's engineers remained of one mind--Brookline...
...years--beginning in 1961--progress on the Inner Belt had been stalled by the existence of a veto that Cambridge, like other cities affected by the highway, could exercise over any route picked by the DPW. In 1963, the state legislature diluted the veto and made it no longer absolute. An arbitration panel, consisting of one representative of the DPW, one representative of the DPW, one representative of the affected city, and a neutral chairman, could now decide any conflict between a city and the DPW. But this arrangement was still referred to as the "veto," and it conveyed...
...protection was deceptive. Not only was the veto no longer absolute, but the DPW had begun to move forward on a route for the highway. In late fall of 1963, it won tentative approval of a route through Boston from Mayor John F. Collins, and the next January it received a similar nod for the location of the small but important segment of the highway in Somerville. Cambridge had done nothing to join in opposition with either of these cities, and now the opportunity to do so was gone forever...
Cambridge became the crucial link, though it still was certain that it could make use of the modified veto. DPW commissioner James D. Fitzgerald appeared before the Council in October and left little doubt that his agency favored the Brookline-Elm St. route. Newspaper accounts later in the fall indicated that the DPW might reconsider a route along railroad tracks in East Cambridge, and a number of councillors wanted Fitzgerald to return and give his views on this location. By a 5-4 vote, the Council defeated a resolution inviting the commissioner; the majority wanted no part of any Inner...
During the summer, Cambridge was stripped of the shield to which it had clung so many years--the veto. A new DPW commissioner, Francis W. Sargeant, went to Beacon Hill determined to get rid of the veto. And he did. Sargeant has become known in the Boston press, as an effective "salesman," and his meteoric rise in politics (he left the DPW in the summer of 1966 to run for Lieutenant Governor, won his race, and is now seriously mentioned as a possible candidate for Governor in 1970) is often attributed to his personable, but persistent approach...