City Adopts $6.3M Loan to Buy Clinic

The City will take out a 10-year, $6.4 million loan to buy the building housing a neighborhood clinic affiliated with Cambridge Hospital.

At a meeting of the City Council last night, members voted to purchase the Lee B. Macht Community Health Center's building, which Cambridge currently leases. City Manager Robert W. Healy said the move, although expensive at first, would help reduce Cambridge Hospital's $6.8 million deficit.

"Over the 20-year period the savings to the city is approximately $18 million," Healy said.

In the first year, the plan will cost the city $200,000 more than simply continuing to rent the building, Healy said. In five years the cost would be equal, and from then on the city would save money.

"We think that the numbers speak for themselves. The support money from Cambridge will decline over time," hospital administrator John O'Brien told the council.

But some councillors said they worried about the program's high cost. Vice Mayor Alice K. Wolf questioned whether the city needed all five floors of the building. But O'Brien said the space was definitely necessary for the city to maintain quality healthcare.

Cambridge Hospital's psychiatry and internal medicine departments are the center's primary occupants. Fifteen other programs also occupy the premises, O'Brien said.

Some tenants pay rent to the city, while those who do not pay provide services free of charge to the community, O'Brien added.

In other business, Councillor Thomas W. Danehy called for a special executive session "to discuss the character and behavior" of Commissioner of Public Works William Sommers. Danehy was advised by the city solicitor, however, that such a session could only be requested after notifying the subject of the inquiry 48 hours in advance.

Having been denied the special session, Danehy chose to make his remarks public. He accused the commissioner of maltreating public works employees, tearing up an avenue near the councillor's house on election day and attempting to provoke a fight with Danehy.

"That type of behavior is not consistent with the way we want our department heads--or anyone else--to act," Danehy said.

The council also passed a resolution in memory of the recent killing of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter by uniformed assassins at the University of Central America in EI Salvador. The measure called for "an end to all military aid and intervention in EI Salvador."

Nancy Ryan, a coordinator for Cambridge's "sister-city" relationship with San Jose Las Flores in EI Salvador, said, "We should understand that the Jesuits were under the protection of the army at the time of their killing."

San Jose Las Flores has been occupied by a special batallion of the Treasury Police since late October. Ryan said the people of the village are undoubtedly suffering at the hands of the military, although little is known of their situation because foreign journalists are not allowed in the country.

On a lighter note, the council passed a resolution congratulating the Harvard football team for its 37-20 victory over Yale on Saturday. Mayor Alfred E. Vellucci, author of the order, invited all Cambridge citizens "to join in the cheering whether they like Harvard or whether they don't like Harvard."