Prominent University and city officials crowd into Cambridge Mayor Anthony D. Galluccio’s spacious office in City Hall on an early afternoon in May, awaiting the announcement of Harvard’s $1 million investment in the Cambridge-Harvard Summer Academy, a joint effort to improve summer school options in the city.

“This is a great day of celebration for us,” Galluccio says, as University President Neil L. Rudenstine looks on. “A comprehensive summer school is something we’ve talked about for a long time.”

Despite veiled references to strained relations throughout the ceremony, the summer school partnership stands as one of the brighter moments in relations between Cambridge and Harvard in the last several years.

But on the same day, residents in the nearby suburb of Watertown are up in arms against the University’s recent acquisition of 30 acres of land in their city.

More than 100 residents—as well as their elementary school-aged children—join with Watertown politicians, loudly voicing their fear that the city will lose long-awaited property taxes needed for funding city services and the town’s education system. The rally blasts the tax-exempt University for not making higher payments to the town.

“Harvard is a schoolyard bully, but instead of asking for our milk money, they are asking us to hand over our children’s education,” Mass. State representative Steven A. Tolman tells the crowd. “They are asking us to hand over our town’s future.”

The day’s two events show the roller-coaster ride that Harvard’s relations with its host cities have taken on a yearly, monthly, and sometimes even daily basis, as the University goes from pushing its own development interests to patching up community relations disasters to trying to build partnerships.

And now, with the University at a crossroads in development—exhausting available resources in Cambridge while laying the groundwork for greater expansion in Allston—how Harvard deals with its neighbors has become central to the University’s interests, something beyond mere altruism.

“Obviously we have decided that getting the University more involved in our settings in a constructive way is in the self-interest of the University,” says Paul S. Grogan, the current vice president of government, community and public affairs for Harvard.

The University’s purchase of more than 130 acres of land in Allston and Watertown over the last decade stretch Harvard’s expansion plans far beyond the boundaries of Cambridge, creating even more complicated community relations issues for the 21st century, as Harvard tries to balance its relationship with all three host cities.

But even as Harvard attempts to smooth relations with all of its neighbors—often using financial leverage and political ties while pushing its own development agenda—some residents and city officials continue to make a public display of opposing the University, putting up roadblocks to any action Harvard takes that they perceive as a threat to their communities.

So as Harvard’s neighbors try to protect their own interests, weary and untrusting of an overbearing and encroaching University, Harvard officials are often left shaking their heads, wondering what will come next.

The Loyal Opposition

Much of the tension that the University faces in regards to its development proposals comes from residents adamantly opposed to any Harvard expansion into their neighborhoods.

“Harvard owns too much, and Harvard develops too much,” says resident Greg Keating. “I don’t see why they have to put their Crimson stamp everywhere.”