A Fistful of Dollars

Cambridge city councilors surpass themselves whenever they try to squeeze more money out of Harvard. Only five years ago, Cambridge renegotiated its ten-year payment in lieu of taxes (PILOT) agreement with Harvard. Now Cambridge’s politicos have smelt the opportunity for politically salutary Harvard-bashing.

Let us be frank. Cambridge and Harvard negotiate a PILOT every ten years. Cambridge would have been perfectly within its rights to hold out for more money in the 2000-2010 cycle, just as Harvard could have held out for less. In another five years, Cambridge will get another chance to renegotiate its deal with Harvard. But the city knew exactly what it was getting when the current agreement was made, and has no just cause to complain. One of the primary reasons for the current push—a rising city budget—is ridiculous for exactly this reason. Cambridge was quite aware that city spending tends to increase, and even that they sometimes increase more quickly than is expected. Cambridge should have been aware of all this in the original negotiations. Harvard has no obligation to pay a relatively constant percentage of the city budget in the first place, but even if it did, there is no reason to be surprised that an amount agreed upon in advance might represent more or less than it was thought to.

In 2009, Cambridge will surely bring similarly flimsy arguments to the next PILOT agreement. But a ten-year agreement is meaningless if it is not actually adhered to for ten years, barring truly incredible circumstances. The city’s only true motive seems to be that it can, just maybe, get more money from Harvard. If this is the case, the agreement is ridiculous. Should Harvard be able to arbitrarily demand renegotiation of the agreement when it thinks it might get less? We can only imagine the uproar about broken promises and bad faith that would ensue if Harvard cynically tried to renege on a bargain. Cambridge should have enough self-respect to hold itself to a similar standard.

The ludicrous situation only highlights that Harvard has no fundamental legal need to give the city anything on top of the $4.5 million it pays on non-tax-exempt properties. The extra $1.7 million that Harvard pays voluntarily under the PILOT is all gravy. We are not at all opposed to the PILOT program as such, but for Cambridge to anxiously squeal for more, instead of graciously acknowledging this gift from one of its largest taxpayers, is absurd. Cambridge will always put voting residents ahead of the students who call the city home, so trying to get more money out of the University is an understandable move; but to pursue this policy relentlessly and arrogantly, to pursue it in the face of a preexisting ten-year agreement, pushes beyond any bound of decency or fairness.

This lack of decency gets at the heart of the matter. Cambridge politicians constantly and unendingly portray themselves as victims of mighty Harvard, when the true relationship is closer to the reverse. Whenever a Cambridge politician complains about land devoted to educating the next generation that does not pay property taxes, we ask ourselves what Cambridge property values would be like if Harvard had never existed at all. In fact, we cannot quite picture what Cambridge would look like had Harvard never been—but it would be a grim picture indeed. The politicians and community leaders who so viciously nip at Harvard’s backside would hardly want to live in that alternate reality. But historical speculation only gets at half of Cambridge’s debt to Harvard. The students, tourists, businesses, science, culture and luminaries that Harvard brings to Cambridge benefit Cantabridgians every day. In dollars and cents alone, we are sure that Harvard more than earns its keep, but there are intangibles as well—armies of student volunteers, a certain vibrancy that too many cities lack nowadays—that Cambridge will always take for granted. Cambridge and its leaders must no longer imagine that they suffer the awful burden of Harvard. When they have cured themselves of that delusion, they should learn to stick with the agreements that they make.