City Board Splits Unchanged In Wake of Tuesday Election

The split between conservatives and liberals on the Cambridge City Council and School Committee will stay the same in the wake of last week's elections, although a few of the faces will be different.

Yesterday's unofficial school committee returns showed five of the six incumbents likely to retain their seats, with liberal Glenn Koocher losing his seat to progressive Henrietta Attles.

Seven of the nine council incumbents also seem likely to hold their seats. Only pro-rent control incumbent Mary Ellen Preusser and one-term rent control foe Lawrence E. Frisoli seem likely to lose their spots on the board. They will probably be replaced by Leonard Russell, described as more moderate than Frisoli, and tenant activist David Sullivan, a strong supporter of rent control.

Final returns will not be available until Saturday night, when election workers finish counting ballots under the city's complicated proportional representation system.

Yesterday's school committee returns showed incumbent Alice Wolf more than 2000 votes ahead of her nearest challenger, Donald Fantini.

Wolf's surplus ballots those over the quota of approximately 2500 needed to insure election) will be redistributed to each voter's second choice candidate.

A glance at the ballots as they were being counted indicated that many will go to Sara Mae Berman and Attles, who both ran with Wolf and Koocher on the progressive Cambridge Civic Association (CCA) slate.

Those ballots, along with votes she will pick up when David Blackman is eliminated from the race, should boost Attles past Koocher for the sixth and final school committee seat Attles, a first-time candidate, will be the only black on the committee.

The seventh vote on the school committee is cast by the mayor, who is elected by the council from among its members.

If standings stay as they are, with Alfred E. Vellucci hanging on to his seat and Preusser losing hers, the council will be split between the four independents and the four CCA liberals. Vellucci, not firmly aligned with either camp, but a rent-control supporter, will hold the balance of power, and probably, if he chooses, will be elected mayor.

If Vellucci replaces mayor Thomas Danehy, the liberal wing of the School Committee, which is split three-three, would also benefit from his votes. During the past term, school committee liberals have had to count on independent David Holway, who is likely to win reelection, for a fourth vote