Officials Question Rent Board's Budget

Cambridge officials expressed mixed reactions in interviews yesterday to a measure in the proposed city budget for next year that would completely fund the Cambridge Rent Control Board with a tax collected on a percentage of monthly rents.

The budget, submitted to the city council last week, calls for the imposition of a one-percent fee collected from the monthly rents on all rent controlled apartments.

City Manager Robert W. Healy said that the fee would be more than enough to fund the rent board's proposed $356,625 budget.

But Mayor Alfred E. Vellucci said that "the rent board has notified me that unless they get more money the whole rent control board is going down."

The rent board's proposed allocation is $70,000 less than last year. Healy said that the department will lose five staff members, regardless of the fee, if the city council approves the budget.

"It is certainly not a progressive tax." Councilor David E. Sullivan, a strong tenant advocate, said. He added that his concern "is that the fee is paying for the whole budget."

General Fund Eliminated

Sullivan said the present budget allocates $297,000 in a general fund in addition to the money collected from permits and fines, adding that their general fund is eliminated in the proposed budget.

"The tenants voted for the Proposition 21/2 overide, and their department should be level funded," Sullivan said. The proposed budget leaves the rent board "absurdly underfunded," he added.

Vellucei said the committee he appointed last month to examine the rent board's administration may consider the one-percent fee at its first public hearing tonight.

Healy said the next step for the proposed fee is an ordinance pending in the rent board that would allow collection of the fee. He added that he expects the ordinance to be passed before preliminary city council budget hearings two weeks from now.