For three years the Board of Aldermen refused to give the franchises, either one of which would give the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad its own independent entrance into New York City. Somehow and from somewhere the announcement was now made that unless the Board of Aldermen acted, a law would be passed by the Legislature stripping it of all power of granting franchises. This threat was executed; the Legislature passed an act vesting franchise-granting power in the Board of Estimate and Apportionment. It may here be parenthetically noted that with the great powers increasingly vested in it the Board of Estimate became the most compact and powerful instrument of government that had ever been developed in the government of New York City. This body is composed of eight officials. Of these, three officials,--the Mayor, the Controller and the President of the Board of Aldermen,--have, by reason of a greater vested plurality of votes, the dominance of power. The other five members are the Borough Presidents. The first point passed upon by this Board was the question of whether or not the New York, Westchester and Boston Railroad Company was or was not a defunct corporation. On March 30, 1904, Corporation Council Delany (elected by Tammany Hall) reported to the Board of Estimate and Apportionment that the Board had no jurisdiction to examine the legal capacity or incapacity of the company.[7] On June 24, 1904, the company received its franchise. The company was really an adjunct of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad, and its franchise gave it the right to operate more than sixteen miles of four-track line within New York City; the company secured practically all the available routes for entrance and exit to and from New York City by way of the Bronx. It was the $6,000,000 contract for constructing this railroad improvement that the New York Contracting and Trucking Company secured.