Harvard claims it protected Cambridge neighborhoods by drawing the "Daley Red Line" in 1972 as a real-estate purchasing boundary officials promised Harvard would not cross. Some Cambridge residents claim the University broke the agreement this year when it leased property outside the line with an option to buy. Others worry about what will happen when the agreement expires next year.

The tax-exemption question is just as sticky. Cambridge plays host not only to Harvard, but also to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a number of smaller schools--as a result 52 per cent of Cambridge land is tax-exempt. Meanwhile, Cambridge provides the universities with public services--water, fire protection, sewers and the rest. In return, Harvard makes payments in-lieu-of-taxes. They increased the amount paid to the city each year in 1979, but tenant lawyer Sullivan estimates that Harvard still pays only about 25 per cent of what it would in taxes. "Harvard recently has been taking more property off the tax rolls," the letter to the Board of Overseers states, citing as proof the University's purchase of the Continental Hotel and the refurbishing of a building on Sumner Rd. City councilor and former Cambridge Mayor Alfred E. Vellucci, a longtime foe of the University, demanded in January that Harvard increase its in-lieu-of-tax payment, later asked for a review of the tax-exempt status of the Biological Laboratories on the grounds that private funds were being used for research, and just two weeks ago sponsored a City Council motion requesting $150,000 from Harvard for a new fire truck. "Every time we answer an alarm at one of their tax-exempt buildings, it costs us money," Vellucci said.

The problems are numerous and identifiable; the solutions to them are not. For City Manager Sullivan, the politics of confrontation is one answer. "They are increasingly going to find themselves in court," Sullivan says. Others say a little bending on both sides would help the situation, "I don't agree that the University is 100 per cent to blame," Crane said recently. "Some city councilors, for political reasons, would rather see a war than a peace. They University is an easy target for them," he adds.

"The electoral system in Cambridge is geared, as it should be, to constituent service," Brewer says, adding that the pressure from city politicians is especially intense when an election is coming (Municipal elections will be held this fall).

To Crane, and to Brewer and his co-workers in the community relations department, the answer is a gradual "opening up of the lines of communication." "I took the initiative on a problem last month--finding a new home for the Observatory Hill branch library, and they listened. Those lines have to be systematically opened and kept that way," Crane said, "or else each party will keep on going its own way, and when something happens, all hell will break loose just like it does now."

"I would hope the result of a great deal of internal reflection would be a decision to seek a working relationship," Preusser says, adding, "We don't need any more problems."