Council Considers Healy Contract

Two issues simmering over the summer were brought to the boiling point at Monday night's City Council meeting, the first since July 26.

A contentious debate over the renewal of City Manager Robert W. Healy's contract and a vote authorizing the city to put links to City Council candidates on its Web site were the main topics of discussion at the meeting.

The highlight of the evening was a debate about Healy's contract, according to local political analyst Robert Winters.

At the July 26 meeting, the council voted 6-3 against an order brought up by Councillor Timothy J. Toomey Jr. to notify Healy that his contract would not be renewed past its current June 30, 2000 expiration date.

The city manager's two-year contract will automatically be renewed for one additional year if the City Council does not act by Dec. 30, since a search for a new city manager requires at least a six-month search.

A reconsideration of Toomey's order sparked the latest debate when the council met Monday night after its summer recess, and again the council voted 6-3 with the same result.

City Councillors Kenneth E. Reeves '72, Toomey and Katherine Triantafillou voted against Healy both times, while the other councillors said they should keep "somebody who's done a pretty good damn job," in the words of Councillor Henrietta Davis.

The first part of the debate was "mean-spirited," said Winters, who is also a candidate in the Nov. 2 City Council election.

"When people get frustrated, they lash out," he said, referring to Reeves, Toomey's and Triantafillou's efforts to end the city manager's contract.

However, Davis said a "constructive conversation" followed the discussion's acrimonious beginning.

During that discussion, it was resolved that the matter of the manager's contract would not be decided until after the November election, when the new City Council is elected.

"It's the next City Council that will be involved in any decision to hire a city manager or not to," said Mayor Francis H. Duehay '55. Duehay added that it will take several months for the next City Council to get to know each other and "settle down" before beginning the process of finding a new city manager, if necessary.

Duehay said that Healy's three opponents on the Council are "trying to force a change" before the election and are "hounding" the city manager.

According to Duehay, the conduct and the integrity of the City Council in terms of how they make a change are very important.

"All of this sort of hurrying around...is not a very good way to run a city," Duehay said.

Russell will bring the matter up in the Government Operations committee, which she chairs, in November or December, Davis said.

"I think the Council would have been foolish to give notice to a perfectly competent City Manager who's done a good job," Winters said. "This way it works out better."

The second major issue of the meeting was the issue of whether or not to put links on the City of Cambridge's Web page to the Web pages of candidates running for citywide election. The order had two major provisions.

"One facet called for the city to provide links to any candidate," while the other prohibited all links on other Web sites to candidates, he said.

The Council voted 6-3 in favor of providing the links, with Councillors Kathleen L. Born, Michael A. Sullivan, and Russell voting against the order.

"It was a very bizarre vote," said Winters, who said the Council was voting for both incongruous provisions at once.

Winters said his online publication Web site, home of the Cambridge Civic Journal, is currently the only site which has links to candidates. He added that he publishes the links "exclusively as a public service."

"It's taking away the only site that has those links," Winters protested.

Davis, who voted for the order, said it was more an issue of "how we can get more people to vote."

"If this is a way to do it, then let's do it," she said.

The Council also "re-filed" two proposed versions to extend the Interim Planning Overlay Petition (IPOP) at the meeting, said Davis.

The IPOP is effectively an ordinance that prohibits any project in excess of 50,000 square feet from getting a building permit. Exceptions would be made for buildings that get exemptions from the city's Planning Board that say they will not be a traffic headache, Winters said.

The current IPOP expires Oct. 1. On Monday night, the Council referred two different proposals for a post-Oct. 1 IPOP to the Planning Board and the Committee on Ordinances for consideration, Duehay said.

One is a citizen petition that would extend the IPOP as it is, while the other is a Planning Board proposal that would add new exemptions--such as ones for dormitories--to the ordinance.

The two proposals will now go through a "complicated process" before a decision is made, said Winters.

"Who knows what the Council will do in the end," Winters said.

Toomey, Reeves and Triantafillou could not be reached for comment last night.