Council Allocates $200,000 to Millenial Celebration

Move over, Paris. If the Cambridge City Council has its way, Cambridge will become the "city of lights" in the new millennium.

During its marathon eight-and-a-half hour midsummer session this Monday, the council allocated $200,000 to Cambridge's millennial celebration, most of which will likely finance an "umbrella of lights" that will remain lit throughout the year 2000.

Under the "umbrella of lights" plan, which Government Operations Committee Chair Sheila Doyle Russell said was favored by her committee, between six and eight lights will be stationed at the perimeters of the city and aimed at locations where special events were taking place.

"With these searchlights, you literally create a canopy over the city," said Pallas Lombardi, the executive director of the Cambridge Arts Council, which is studying the plan's cost and feasibility. Lombardi said the arts council is also considering putting together a giant citywide calendar of millennial events.

"The idea is to draw throughout the year attention to the idea of light as an artistic medium and light as something the city owns, a city of light or city of enlightenment or understanding," said Matthew Belge, a lighting artist who helped develop the idea.

The council approved the $200,000 millennium allocation--which will also pay for the hiring of a year 2000 coordinator--by a vote of 7-2. The bill's supporters argued that Cantabrigians deserved to have a little fun this New Year's.

"I do think there is a time and place to put Cambridge on the mark for the millennium," said City Councillor Kathleen L. Born. Born said the lighting theme will create a "strong image of a city that is tied together."

"If we're a city that doesn't have money for a celebration, it casts us as a little bit dowdy," she added.

Councillors Kenneth E. Reeves '72 and Katherine Triantafillou, however, said the money would be better spent in other ways.

"Reasonable people can differ, but if I had $200,000, I would not spend it sending lights to festivals that didn't ask for them," said Reeves, who said he would prefer a "more intellectual celebration" of the new century.

Triantafillou said that some Cambridge residents faced graver challenges than a lack of millennial lighting.

"In good conscience cannot support a $200,000 celebration of the millennium," Triantafillou said. "It seems we should be spending the money on something else, like getting affordable housing...if we spend it at all."

She said the city of lights motif might also undercut existing Cambridge tourism campaigns, which stress other themes.

But the council ultimately decided this particular event was worth the cash.

"It comes along once every hundred years," Russell said.