Council Vows Support To 10 Health Centers

A contingent of elderly people, low and moderate wage-earners, and parents holding small children told the Cambridge City Council in a hearing last night that closing the city's 10 neighborhood health centers would deny them adequate care, and received unanimous assurance from the councilors that they would attempt to maintain funding for the centers at present levels.

A preliminary budget recommendation presented to the city manager last week by Melvin Chalfen, the city's commissioner of hospitals and health services, proposed closing the centers next year and routing their patients to emergency rooms in Cambridge hospitals.

Audrey Cunningham, spokesman for the Committee on Save Our Clinic, told the council that the emergency rooms would not provide the familiarity between staff and patients and the preventative care that the clinics--which handle over 75,000 visits a year--do.

Stating disappointment that Chalfen's recommendation was made public, city manager Robert W. Healy said at the hearing that he only began examining the hospital commission's $23.5 million budget yesterday. He added that the recommendation depends on his approval and then the approval of the full council in its consideration of the entire city budget this spring.

Healy said the city can either fully fund the centers at current levels, at a cost of $450,000 to $600,000 in funds from property tax revenues, or adopt a consolidation plan that would close four centers and reduce services at the six others, requiring $218,000 in tax support.

"The optimal solution is all clinics remaining open." Healy said, adding he cannot reduce the city's budget to meet the property tax revenue lost to Proposition 2 1/2 "without touching essential services--health, police and schools."

In passing a revolution made by independent councilor Walter J. Sullivan, the council agreed that funding the centers would be a priority in next year's city budget.

Healy said the third year of a Federal grant funding the clinics was cut recently, causing the financial problem. He added that one solution would be to increase in-lieu-of-tax payments by Harvard and MIT--currently around $500,000 each--in support the clinics.