DAVID AGEE

Encouraging city development is the key to solving the tax and nousing problems of Cambridge, first-time City Council candidate David Agee says.

"Look at condominium control and rent control. New housing can do something positive," Agee says. Building more housing and attracting nonpolluting industry can ease the pressure of the housing crunch and pump in new revenues for the city, he adds.

Agee says that many areas are available for unobtrusive development in Cambridge. "I would like to push for some real city planning for developing those areas," he says.

Agee, a book publisher and a former member of the Brandeis University faculty, says university expansion may be largely an emotional issue. "It is a little two-faced to attack Harvard as an ogre in the city when Harvard is the reason a lot of people are here."

RICHARD BENTUBO

Richard Bentubo, the smiling owner of Richie's Arco gasoline station, is raising some eyebrows in the year's City Council race.

The president of the Portuguese Cultural Society has run a big money campaign that may win him many votes. Although he has been endorsed by the anti-rent control Cambridge Homeowners and Taxpayers, Bentubo says he favors the program. "I just want to exempt four-, five-, and six-family owner-occupied houses," he adds. Two-and three-family owner-occupied houses are already exempt.

Calling for more elderly housing, Bentubo says it is "impossible" to live within state-mandated guidelines on the amount municipal spending is allowed to increase annually.

CHARLES CARAGIANES

Charles Caragianes, a 21-year-old student at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, doesn't believe in simplifying city issues.

Instead of rent control for example, Caragianes favors capped vacancy decontrol (allowing rent hikes slightly larger than inflation), but only in cases where elderly and fixed income or long-term residents of the city wouldn't be harmed.

"It's basically a conservative approach," Caragianes explains.

Although he is a member of the Cambridge Civic Association (CCA), he did not seek the group's endorsement, because he said the group was becoming too doctrinaire in its approach.

DANIEL CLINTON