Sixteen candidates for Cambridge City Council discussed the role of neighborhood associations at the Peabody School auditorium last night.

The forum, sponsored by the Neighboorhood Nine Association, brought more than 40 spectators. Most of the prominent candidates running attended, and each was given questions in advance.

In addition to neighborhood participation issues, the candidates discussed rent control and fiscal planning.

The majority of candidates spoke of the need for more active and more powerful neighborhood associations. Citing the success of such associations in St. Paul Minnesota, Mayor Alice K. Wolf said she thought the groups should be given "a more formal role, more decision-making role."

Wolf said she advocated the development of a "broad, fair, perhaps elected" association which would represent the needs of a whole neighborhood instead of the special interests of a few.

Candidate Elaine Noble said she favored widespread neighborhood involvement as well.

"If you don't shape your environment, you can't get around it," Noble remarked. Candidate George Spartichino said that the associations need "legal standing" to be more successful.

Most candidates voiced their overall support for current rent control policies, although many expressed dissatisfaction with the lack of a "means test" to keep more affluent tenants from taking advantage of the system.

Rent Control

Councillor William J. Walsh said the Cambridge system is one "where the poor subsidize the rich." Wolf said, however, that that there are relatively few problems with rent-control, given the vast number of rent-controlled units in the city.

On fiscal planning, almost all candidates asserted that they considered a Proposition 2 1/2 override unnecessary. Wolf suggested that Harvard and MIT students might be tapped as possible sources of tax revenue, advocating that the Council make "those who are benefitting from city services pay for them."

Councillor Timothy J. Toomey later echoed this sentiment, citing the services city police and fire departments render to the universities.

"The city should be compensated accordingly," Toomey noted.

The financial possibilities of the tourist market in Cambridge was a theme common to several of the candidates. Candidate Robert L. Hall said the city could also look into capitalizing on the "international dignitaries" who often visit Harvard.

Saying that "some of the smartest people in the world" live in Cambridge, Noble remarked that the university industry "never sleeps."