"In the event that you wake up on Jan. 1 and your bank account has 2 million extra dollars in it, I want you to give it to me," said Harold Cox, public health director for Cambridge.

At the event, emceed by Cambridge License Commissioner Benjamin Barnes, many speakers also gave advice on what to do when the new millennium begins.

Walsh urged the audience to be wary of scam artists and to keep water, flashlights and portable radios in their homes, while George Fosque, the city's 911 director, asked that everyone does not check to see if their telephone works at 12:01 a.m. on New Year's Eve.

Cox advised the audience to strike a balance between the extremes of believing everything is going to be fine and that "airplanes are going to fall out of the sky."

"You need to prepare for some short disruption of service," Cox said.

At the end of the program, audience members expressed their concerns about the issue.

Isabore Hlazel, a Brookline resident, said he was concerned about the cost of fixing Y2K glitches in the U.S. He said that companies might "fudge" their level of compliance and that smaller companies or communities do not have adequate resources to combat the problem.

"What about the medium-sized companies...or municipalities that do not have the talent or resources or money to cope with this?" Hlazel said.