Calling him "the most competent" manager, Harvard endorsed last week the extension of City Manager Robert W. Healy's term for two years.

"Healy's success as the City Manager has been to balance the various interests, needs and concerns of Cambridge's many constituencies," James H. Rowe, vice president for government, community and public affairs, wrote in a letter to the city council Thursday.

The letter, which was recorded in yesterday's council agenda, commended Healy's management of the city's social programs.

"Figuring out how to run this range of programs while keeping the city solvent is the essence of the city manager's job. And it is a job which even a newcomer like me knows that Bob Healy has done well," Rowe wrote. Rowe, who was appointed in the spring, could not be reached for comment last night.

Mayor Kenneth E. Reeves '72 had asked the council last Monday to extend Healy's term, due to expire in June, through the middle of 1997. Healy has been in office since 1981.

Last night, the council postponed discussion on the proposed extension until October 19.

Council members said they want to avoid the bitter feuding which surrounded the extension of Healy's term in 1993.

"My own hope is that a meeting will provide a forum in which both citizens and councillors with opinions over the contract will have the opportunity to state them," Reeves said.

"I am not suggesting that we prolong this process but I would like some time to think this through, as a new council member," Councillor Kathleen L. Born said.

Public response to the proposed extension has been mixed. The city's civic associations have begun to draw battle lines, with public statements for and against the city manager.

The Cambridge Civic Association, the city's liberal political group, has charged Healy with ethical impropriety.

R. Philip Dowds, the association president, said last week that the state Ethics Commission had failed to fully investigate a real estate Joan Healy took out with City Solicitor Russell Higley in the mid-1980s.

Although an august report from a commission investigator cleared both men of any wrongdoing, the issue was raised again at last night's council meeting.

Opponents of rent control were angered by a contingency plan Healy issued last week in the event that rent control is abolished by a state referendum November 8.

"He has gone completely over the edge. He'll do anything to keep his job," said Barbara Pilgrim, a Cambridge resident.

But groups ranging from Harvard to the Cambridge Chambers of Commerce endorsed Healy last week.

He has done an excellent job in maintaining quality of life concerns, as well as maintaining fiscal solvency for Cambridge," Helena G. Rees, the Chamber's public-affairs director, told the council last night.

Robert Boulrice, president of the Central Square Neighborhood Coalition, said Healy "has demonstrated his concern and support for the people living and working in the Central Square neighborhoods."