University officials have held one conference with a Cambridge citizens' committee in an attempt to iron out Harvard-Cambridge financial relations and reach some lasting settlement of the vexing tax question, it was learned last night.

No agreement has yet been arrived at, and meetings will continue during the Spring.

In the negotiations now under way may lie the key not only to future town-gown relations, strained during the past year, but to the political fortunes of Thomas McNamara, president of the Cambridge City Council.

McNamara Next Mayor?

A consistent assailant of Harvard's tax-exempt position, the lanky young politician may ride into office next fall as Cambridge's new mayor on this very issue. For it is no secret around the city that he is the incumbent Mayor Lyons' most likely successor.

It was McNamara who last fall was a leader in the "City of Harvard" movement. Six weeks ago it was he who got the Council to pass a resolution requiring Mayor Lyons to appoint a citizens' committee to confer with University Hall. And it was the same McNamara who on Tuesday night reopened the question when he traced for the Council the tripling of Harvard's tax-exempt real estate value since 1920.

If the Mayor's committee obtains a settlement favorable to Cambridge, much of the credit will go to McNamara; if Cambridge comes out on the short end, it is more than likely that McNamara will wage a prolonged anti-Harvard campaign, playing on resentment at the University's vast holdings which city tax-collectors cannot touch, as a stepping stone to the Mayor's office.

McNamara feels that the tax question is at the root of Harvard-Cambridge friction. In an interview yesterday he described Harvard's mushroom-like growth since 1920 as an increasing burden on a depression-ridden industrial city.

"M. I. T. has always cooperated better," he said. "And in New Haven I understand Yale has been far more sympathetic toward the city's problems."

As a possible solution to a situation in which Harvard students receive the benefits of city service and do most of their spending in Boston, while the University pays only an approximate $10.- 000 a year in "voluntary" tax payments, McNamara envisions a student charge.

"Perhaps Massachusetts residents who live outside of Cambridge and attend Harvard should pay $5.00, non-Massachusetts students $10.00, or something like that," he said.

Of town-gown relations, McNamara said, "If Harvard, M. I. T., and Radcliffe officials sat down with public officials, they might thrash things out; sometimes, though, Harvard seems a little arrogant.