Sometimes running a big city can be confusing.

Last Monday night the Cambridge City Council ordered the city manager to investigate lighting on Harvard-owned streets, with an eye towards making the University pay for the electricity.

Now it appears that Harvard may already be footing the bill, at least on some streets. "As far as I know, Harvard pays for it all. They pay a bill for the lighting every month to Cambridge Light and Electric," William Crocker, city electrician, said yesterday.

Cambridge city officials said they were sure, though, that the University owes money to the city. "The way electricity prices have been going up, it could be a pretty substantial amount of money," a spokesman for Mayor Thomas W. Danehy said yesterday. He added the city manager as beginning an inspection of Harvard-owned streets to determine just how much the charge will come to.

Bernie Flynn, a Danehy aide, said Tuesday that Harvard held title to several Cambridge streets, both in the Yard and around the Law School. He added that the city manager was also investigating both Lesley College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Harvard community relations officials were unavailable yesterday to clear up the mystery.