Cambridge Mayor Alfred E. Vellucci isn't kidding.

It's more than a joke for him when he proposes renaming Harvard Square "Piazza Leprechauno." And he has a deadly serious point in mind when he suggests that Harvard should secede from the rest of Cambridge.

Harvard, the mayor explains, often gets a free ride from the city. Most of the University's vast land holdings in Cambridge are exempt from municipal taxes. Even with its large voluntary payment in lieu of taxes, Harvard pays the city less than a private landowner would.

And yet Harvard requires police and fire protection. Harvard creates garbage that the city has to pick up. And above all, Harvard attracts large numbers of students and professors to live in Cambridge, diminishing the city's supply of affordable housing.

So for the past 38 years, Vellucci has been nettling Harvard in his own way, trying "to wake 'em up. Wake 'em up to the fact that they too are on this planet. That they too are in the city of Cambridge."

No matter how bizarre his policies may seem, Vellucci claims a measure of success. He points to one scheme that is still among his most memorable--the 1956 effort to pave over Harvard Yard to make way for a bus depot.

"Once upon a time we couldn't clean our streets," explains Vellucci. "In the wintertime we couldn't plough them, and in the summer-time, during the good weather, we couldn't sweep them. And the reason is that a lot of the students would leave their automobiles parked and then go home, like, to New York and California, on furlough.

"So I went to Harvard and asked them to provide these kids with a parking space so that they could get their cars off the streets. I said to them, 'If you allow them to bring cars, then you must control them. You must provide them with a place to park their automobiles if you give them permission to bring their cars.' And they paid no attention.

"So then I said, 'Pave the Harvard Yard, and make it a big parking space. Chop down all the trees. And then the goddamn kids would get their cars off the streets and into the Harvard Yard and stop being a nuisance.

"So then Harvard bought a bus. They bought a bus. And they opened up a parking lot across the Charles River in the Business School area. And they have a shuttle bus that picks up the kids and drives them across the river. So that's what came out of it."

Last January, Vellucci announced he would not seek another term on the City Council. His decision marked the end of an era in city politics. Since the early 1940s, the City Council has been divided between members of the liberal Cambridge Civic Association (CCA), an alliance of good-government reformers whom Vellucci disparages as the "goo-goos," and neighborhood-based politicians running as Independents.

And then there's Vellucci. Nominally an Independent, Vellucci has functioned as a political party unto himself for the last 38 years, a maverick councillor pursuing his own political agenda.

"I'm not Independent, CCA," he says. "I am Alfred Vellucci. I don't belong to any political parties."

What are Vellucci's concerns? He says his primary goal is to protect his working class constituents. That means protecting neighborhoods from big developers--including Harvard--and upholding rent control. The only city councillor still serving who voted for the city rent control ordinance in 1969, Vellucci describes himself as thearchitect of the system.

But unlike many liberal councillors, Velluccitends to think on the level of the individual. Hisattempts to solve the city's problems can bedisarmingly simple, as when he proposed setting upliving quarters for the homeless in 17 Quincy St.,former residence of the Harvard president andcurrent center for Harvard's governing boards.