City councillors in Cambridge are thrilled for their neighbors down the street in Watertown.

Last week, city officials in Watertown celebrated a deal they struck with Harvard. The University will pay the city $3.8 million this year—and will pay that, and more, every year for the next 52 years.

In return, the University gains the right to develop a thirty-acre tract known as the Arsenal.

The deal will protect Watertown’s property tax base for a half century. Local politicians and newspapers hailed it as generous and precedent-setting.

And now Cambridge wants to share in the celebration.

“[Harvard has] clearly decided to mitigate any injury to Watertown’s tax base. I think that that’s wonderful,” says city councillor Anthony D. Galluccio. “I would be very interested to hear Harvard explain why these same principles are not equally important to its home city.”

Harvard owns 189 acres of land in Cambridge that it doesn’t pay taxes on. But even though the University maintains its tax-exempt status, it makes voluntary contributions on an annual basis.

These payments in lieu of taxes (PILOT) are intended to make up for removing significant acreage from city tax rolls, but the amount of the payments has created a perennial dispute in town-gown relations.

Some University land is on the tax rolls, ownings for which Harvard pays $4.3 million a year. But the current PILOT contributions to Cambridge for the rest of its land—the 189 tax-exempt acres—stand at just $1.5 million.

Now, following the Watertown deal, city leaders in Cambridge are renewing their calls to Harvard to renegotiate its PILOT agreement.

The dollar amount in the Watertown agreement is significant because it represents a payment about equal to the Arsenal’s full taxable land value.

Harvard officials say this represents a policy of offering significant PILOT payments for each acre taken off the tax rolls. But since this only applies to new purchases, the question remains whether Harvard will use the same standard for the land it already owns in Cambridge.

According to Cambridge Mayor Michael A. Sullivan, the full taxable value of Harvard’s tax-exempt ownings totals $34 million—more than 20 times the amount of Harvard’s current PILOT agreement.

“Communities that are becoming new host cities will get a better deal than communities that have hosted the University for 366 years,” Sullivan says. “I think there has to be some retroactivity as to how you base the PILOT.”

Harvard agreed to the current arrangement in 1990. That agreement served as the framework for the Watertown deal, but now both Sullivan and Galluccio hope Harvard’s dealings in Watertown will serve as the “benchmark” for future negotiations between Cambridge and the University.