Pitkin, who led the Mid-Cambridge Neighborhood Association for 16 years, declines to name any particular policies that he would promote if elected to the council.

Instead, he says, his goal would be to provide direction to council, specifically mentioning improved city schools and town-gown relations as two of his goals.

“I would like to see the city change the direction that it’s going in,” he says. “I think the city is well managed, but in the world today, good government takes more than management. It takes leadership, and I think that’s something we need more of.”

Laurie Taymor-Berry, who registered as a candidate on Monday, says she plans to begin an active campaign to bring her priorities—addressing issues facing low-income residents, people of color and jobless young people—to the forefront of Cambridge public consciousness.

“I will pick up the nomination papers tomorrow,” she said on Monday, “and begin what we call the long walk. Walking from door to door.”

A lifelong activist who started her work in the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, Taymor-Berry says that she is motivated largely by ideals of mitigating economic disparities in the city.

“I strongly believe in the ideas and principles that go back to the New Deal and the social security act of 1935,” she says. “Cambridge is an economically solvent system overall, but there are several pockets that are not reaping the benefit of the high tech and the expansion.”

Taymor-Berry says she wants to harness the prosperity of Cambridge’s universities and burgeoning industry to help support residents currently struggling to find jobs. She proposes that Harvard and MIT pay local property taxes, from which they are presently exempt.

She is also a member of the Committee for Cambridge Rent Control, which proposes to return rent control—which was ended by a statewide ballot referendum in the mid-1990s—to Cambridge.

A Little Help From Friends

In Cambridge, where 400 votes do not make for victory but signal a distinguished loss, success in the polls is based on personal recognition more than bought publicity, Winters says.

“You don’t get elected on billboards or sky writing, you just have to have people who know you,” he remarks.

On the basis of name recognition, Winters expects Anthony D. Galluccio, who performed best in the last election by a landslide, to hold his present seat.

Depending on the strength of some of more promising contenders, he says, one or two of the other councillors—particularly those who have been relatively silent over of the past term—may have to fight hard for their positions.

Others registered for the upcoming election include Carole Bellew, Jeffrey Blanson, Matt De Borgalis, Daniel Greenwood and Craig Kelley. Robert Hall Sr. will be running for the third time, while Boston University administrator Ethridge King, who garnered nearly 400 votes in the last election, will be running against the incumbents once more.