City Bitties

"The people who are hungry and needing food blend in with the rest of the people in Harvard and Central Squares...I think that's the reason they're here," said Carolyn K. Tribe She is the founder of HOPE, Help Other People Eat, which hopes to teed Cambridge's hungry and homeless.

HOPE, still in its planning stages, will eventually operate as a mobile food bank, providing lunches out of a van at stops near Central and Harvard Squares According to Tribe, there are currently no weekday free lunch programs in the city.

Says Tribe, who has worked with several mental health agencies. "I felt very frustrated that I couldn't do more than give out a sandwich occasionally." "I thought I would create a mechanism to channel other people's altruism."

Tribe is working closely with volunteers at the Phillip Brooks House (PBH) and will probably have enough money to begin the soup kitchen on wheels sometime this summer. Anyone interested in volunteering their time or making tax-deductible donations to HOPI can do so by calling 661-HOPI.

Mayor Leonard J. Russell declared yesterday. March 4, as Citystep Day in Cambridge in honor of more than 100 local children who danced their hearts out last night and Sunday night in Sanders Theatre.

Citystep, a children dance troupe under the direction of Sabrina T Peck '84, has been bringing Harvard students and kids from the Agassiz, Longfellow, Fletcher and King elementary schools together for two years now.

The Mayor's proclamation, which he presented to an audience of several hundred on opening night, read, in part, that "Citystep has offered this city's youth a chance to develop confidence, discipline, and artistic expression through dance theater."

The dance group goes on to one more performance this weekend at the Loeb Drama Center.

After all the fare and heated discussion of the past months, linkage proposal which would require developers in Cambridge to provide low-and moderate-income housing died a quiet death yesterday at midnight.

But since the City Council did not actually defeat the proposals last night, choosing instead to let them expire on the table, similar petitions can be refiled, said Councilor David E. Sullivan. So it's likely that other proposals will be introduced aimed at increasing Cambridge's housing stock by forcing developers to build apartments along with office buildings.

Councilor Alfred E. Vellueer, a more cautious linkage supporter, said linkage probably won't get through without support from the business community. "They'll have to bring big business into it...unless they get business, they'll be wasting their time," said the East Cambridge representative.

Harvard and MIT, the city's two largest property owners, headed opposition to the proposals.

Sullivan agreed that the proposals did not pass in part because "business was monolithic in its opposition." He's still optimistic, though.

"It will take some time, but eventually we'll be able to do something."

One of Harvard's exclusive, all-male final clubs will go before the Massachusetts Appelate Tax Board next month charging that a Cambridge tax increase which would more than double their taxes is illegal.

The Fly Club, on Ml. Auburn St., will go before the board on April 26, in a case whose verdict will probably apply to all nine of the Clubs, according to the lawyer for the Delphic Club on Linden St.

The Delphic is listed by Cambridge as a delinquent property because it owes $27,975.65 in back taxes and interest.

Delphic officials have said they will not pay the taxes until their appeal of a 1984 city assesment is settled.