Seven City Councilors Attended Washington Meeting Last Week

Seven members of the Cambridge City Council spent last weekend in Washington, D.C. lobbying for city concerns and exchanging ideas with 2500 other representatives of U.S. towns and cities.

The councilors will return today and tomorrow from the annual National League of Cities convention, which traditionally focuses on the president's budget proposals.

"I think I speak for my colleagues also when I say I am strongly opposed to Reagan's budget for fiscal year 1983 and his proposed new federalism," Councilor David Sullivan said last week before leaving for the capital. He added that almost every facet of Reagan's proposed budget is worthy of opposition by city officials.

This meeting gives us a chance to meet all the people involved in federal funding. And we start lobbying for every extra dime we can get." Walter Sullivan said last week.

The Washington meeting gave the Cambridge councilors an opportunity to visit the Massachusetts Congressional delegation. "We're going to visit Tsongas, Kennedy and O'Neill and unfold all our woes," Mayor Alfred E. Vellucci said last week.

Councilor David Sullivan said he hopes to lobby on behalf of the Cambridge Neighborhood Health Clinics, which have been threatened by cuts.

Councilor Francis H. Duehay '55 went to Capitol Hill on Friday to testify to the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Committee on Environment and Public Works on behalf of the League.

Reagan's proposed budget would slash EPA funding in half, and in his testimony Duehay explained that state and local governments could not assume financial responsibility for the eliminated programs.

"If Reagan's budget does gain Congressional approval, Cambridge will suffer sever setbacks in its environmental programs," Duebay said in an interview last week. He cited the reconstruction of the city sewage system, and the monitoring or pollution as the first projects that would be crippled.