"I will go to any and all meetings on the CRA so I know what's going on," Councillor Alfred E. Velucci promises. "I'll even bug a few offices if I have to."

Ron Thompson, the CRA's director of the Kendall project, says that the Sonesta meeting was initially arranged to inform the councillors of a bill pending in the state legislature which would locate a state office building on the Quadrangle site. According to Thompson, the councillors and CRA representatives also discussed Kendall Square development in general.

After the Sonesta meeting, the Authority revised its two-year old proposal, altering the plan for the Quadrangle from residential to employment uses, and submitted an order to the Council that has sparked the latest round of the controversy. The CRA-sponsored motion would give the renewal agency the power to initiate the preliminary steps for development.

"The proposed order reflects what the CRA understood the wishes of the Council to be," Thompson says.

BUT COMMUNITY groups remain dissatisfied and have jammed the Council chambers and Kennedy School during hearings on the motion. "Don't split the Quadrangle and Triangle--they're one area," JoAnn Allen of Hard Times told the Council. "Before you know it, they'll be back to the original plan and the people will be zonked."

At the hearings, the CRA and community groups have battled over five major issues: taxes, jobs, housing, traffic, and the credibility and public responsibility of the CRA.

* TAXES: Much debate revolves around the project's tax benefit for the city. CRA Executive Director Robert Rowland asserts that such revenue could mean $7.50 off the city's ever rising property tax rate. Others, though, contest the methods by which the CRA calculated the tax benefit. John Brode, Democratic City Committee Chairman, says that the Gladstone Associates used 100 per cent occupancy figures to estimate tax revenue but only 50 to 70 per cent occupancy to calculate city service costs. Thompson refuted Brode's charges.

"Brode bases his claims that Gladstone underestimated occupancy on figures taken from two other developments in the city which average 2.1 people per dwelling unit while Kendall Square is projected to have only 1.3 persons per unit," Thompson replied. "It's like comparing apples and oranges."

To add to the confusion, the city's Planning Department, commissioned by the Council to conduct an independent evaluation of the CRA proposal, says that Gladstone's tax figures are too conservative and underestimate the revenue the City will receive.

Some critics, citing Boston's Prudential Center, argue that the City may have to make tax deals to attract developers which will erase much of the expected revenue. They also point to the $1.5 million in taxes that would have been collected over the past few years if the previous industries in Kendall Square had not been demolished. According to the CRA's Remer, the CRA cannot offer tax breaks to developers, although the City itself may decide to.

Hard Times and CTOC discount the tax argument further by advocating the abolition of the property tax and the institution of a steeply graduated income tax in its place. It is extremely unlikely that the Council will follow their advice.

* JOBS: "It all comes down to a question of whether you are trying to maximize the tax base and revenue in the City or jobs for Cambridge residents--they're not compatible in every instance," City Planning Department Director Robert A. Bowyer '56, said at the first hearing. Under questioning from Councillor Saundra Graham, Bowyer added that the CRA had opted more to raise the tax base in its proposal.

Both the Gladstone Report and the Planning Department's evaluation are dubious about the economic feasibility of manufacturing on the Kendall site. The Planning Department states, "Cambridge cannot compete for firms whose land cost and access priorities require a suburban location."

The consultants did conclude that certain blue-collar industries--printing and publishing, instruments, and electrical machinery--could be attracted to the site, but that only a small proportion of the jobs would be available for Cambridge residents. "If the city opts for a manufacturing use to provide jobs for Cambridge residents, then it must commit itself to aggressive manpower development or jobs will go to residents elsewhere of other cities," the Planning Department report concludes.

The jobs that will be created by the CRA's proposal for the Triangle are largely white-collar, professional, and technical, but Rowland says his agency will seek blue-collar industries for the Quadrangle, "if at all possible."