Cambridge-Harvard: A Case of Indigestion

"We had a real nice fish lunch on Harvard," City Councilor Alfred E. Vellucci said Tuesday after meeting with Michael F. Brewer, Harvard's assistant vice-president for government and community affairs, this week.

The meal may have been more enjoyable for Vellucci than it was for Brewer. The veteran city councilor and former mayor of Cambridge told Brewer that unless Harvard voluntarily agreed to stop taking property off the tax rolls he will try to forcibly stop them with a City Council resolution.

Vellucci said the University, by converting residential and hence taxable space into tax-exempt space for "academic purposes," was draining the city coffers at a time when Cambridge needs the money most. "We are facing substantial layoffs of teachers, all sorts of cut-backs," Vellucci said.

Brewer promised to think the matter over and to answer Vellucci sometime next week.

In the University's defense, he said that Harvard has taken fairly small amounts of taxable property off the rolls in recent years. When it has removed taxable property, the University has made payments to Cambridge "in lieu of taxes," Brewer said, adding Harvard has already promised to make a full and permanent in-lieu-of-tax payment on 7 Sumner Rd., the only property the University is currently converting to a non-taxable use--office space.

The University pledged in a 1976 report to the community that Harvard land purchases would not decrease tax revenue for the city, Lewis Armistead, Harvard community relations representative, said yesterday.

"What he wants is substantially what we've been doing for the last few years, Armistead said. "He just wants to make it into some sort of agreement," he added.

"They have to be absolutely clear about what they mean by 'in lieu of tax payments,' " Vellucci said, adding, "the average working class resident doesn't even know what that means. He thinks the University is a bastard that is doing him in, and you can't blame him."

Poor communication with the community has aggravated the situation, Vellucci said. "The University should be buying space in the Cambridge media to get their message across to the people," he added.

If Brewer and 'the higher-ups over there at Harvard" will not agree to his proposal, Vellucci said that he would file similar legislation with the council and the state legislature, and "wage major verbal war with Harvard."

"I have a friend in Italy who was asking me about the city's problems with Harvard. Alumni will stop giving the bucks if they read newspaper accounts about what is going on," he said.

Vellucci said he expected to hear soon from Brewer, adding, "We've invited him over here to East Cambridge for a nice spaghetti dinner."