Phila. to cut back on snowplowing

It was among the achievements of which former Mayor John Street was most proud: No matter how narrow the street you lived on, if there was snow, there would be a snowplow.

Just days into his first term as mayor, a major storm brought orders from Street to plow the tiniest of side streets - some for the first time ever - with new equipment the city had bought for that precise purpose.

After all, he fancied himself the quality-of-life mayor, the "neighborhood mayor."

Whatever budget cuts came, snow removal remained, cleaning up all those tiny streets from Manayunk to Mantua.

"People don't want to hear, 'We can't do this. Go get your shovel,' " Street said in 2000.

Well, they are going to hear it now.

Last week's dire budget news included the pronouncement that the city would no longer plow the little streets. It can't afford to, Mayor Nutter said. Use your shovels.

Perhaps it was just another effort to break with the practices of the Street administration?

Whatever the case, at a news conference, Nutter also implied - maybe hoped - that this wouldn't be of any real consequence, thanks to the environment.

Global warming, he said. Global warming.

- Marcia Gelbart

Here's one budget cut that Mayor Nutter didn't announce last week but that is right around the corner:

A pay cut for Ronald L. Cuie, former director of the Mayor's Office for the Reentry of Ex-Offenders.

As director, Cuie was paid $87,500. When he was demoted six months later to another post in the same office, his salary went unchanged.

Now that change is coming. Cuie's paycheck "will be reduced as part of the budget-reduction process and considering his change in responsibility," Nutter spokesman Doug Oliver said.

How much of a reduction?

That decision, Oliver said, had not been made.

- Marcia Gelbart

The great downside of being a one-party town is the absence of a valuable voice of the loyal opposition. The Republican Party in Philadelphia has not assumed that role for quite some time.

That's why it was refreshing to hear from Al Schmidt, executive director of the Republican City Committee, after Nutter's announcement on Thursday of sobering budget cuts. Here are some of Schmidt's comments, which got left on the cutting-room floor in Friday's Inquirer, as did many other voices in the clamor:

"It's perverse that the Nutter administration's response to a weakening economy is postponing tax relief to those who are suffering most from it," Schmidt said, referring to planned cuts in the city income tax that will be delayed until 2015.

"This isn't a short-term problem," Schmidt said. "It's a consequence of the chronic mismanagement of the city's economy and fiscal condition. . . . It's curious that the only time our city's administration focuses on efficiency and effectiveness is when it runs out of money."

Schmidt said Nutter didn't make tough decisions in this year's budget. "The only tough decisions the city seems to make is stopping tax breaks, until it faces a fiscal meltdown," he said.

Yes, Nutter was an easy target last week, having to announce the kind of draconian cuts that mayors around the country are dealing with in a global economic collapse, but Heard in the Hall welcomes any signs of life from the city GOP.

Schmidt, 37, a former senior auditor for the federal Government Accountability Office, was brought aboard as full-time executive director in January to revitalize the moribund City Committee. Harassing the other party is a good place to start.

- Jeff Shields