Making sense of the new city budget

IN THIS, THE THIRD year of a troubled economy that's wielding a sledgehammer to city budgets around the country, Mayor Nutter's announcement of an additional $47 million in cuts (on top of $44 million already made) for the 2010-11 fiscal year is not exactly ho-hum, but it doesn't quite have the same ability to shock as in past years.

Compared to the city's budget challenges in 2008 (a $1 billion deficit over five years) and 2009 ($1.4 billion), this year's five-year plan had to fill a gap that was "only" between $600 million and $800 million.

That's not to say we got off easy; on the contrary, cutting from smaller and smaller pots of money gets harder every time. It's a measure of what perverse times we live in to realize that the first billion in cuts is always the easiest.

So what does this budget mean?

Immediately, the $47 million in cuts that Nutter announced yesterday when he delivered the five-year plan means a round of cutting that is designed to spread the pain: Police will take a $10 million hit by reducing overtime and cancelling two Police Academy classes; parks and rec will lose $2.5 million that was to go to planting trees; prisons and Philadlephia Community College will each lose a $1 million; the Fire Department will be cut by $3.6 million, achieved by closing four or five fire companies on a rolling basis.

The mayor explained that "the numbers add up. They make sense."

While we have no doubt the numbers add up, we're less certain about the kind of sense they make. Back in 2008, the plan to close 11 libraries created a backlash that was both stunning and long-lasting; the mayor has carefully avoided cuts at the libraries since. In fact, this year, he withdrew his threat to reduce libraries to a four-day-a-week schedule. But does this still make sense?

During that public library insurrection - which succeeded in keeping the libraries open - the city argued that it had decided its cuts based on use and on population; closing libraries was, it argued, a way to "right size" the city's facilities to cope with a smaller population than when the current system was built. So why isn't that still true?

We're not arguing for throwing libraries under the bus; their community value is obviously high. But should community values still trump the hard realities of a bad economy?

The value of a city service is hard to measure, but actual use isn't. And that's data we're still missing. After two years of budget-cutting, can we still afford to not be "right-sized?"

For example, the rolling closure of the fire houses proposed this time around is likely to draw outcry and safety concerns. Those concerns would be allayed if we could see the data on response times, the number of fires handled per house, and how that data will drive the rolling closures. We assume that the Fire Department brass used such data in coming up with this plan, but why can't we all see it?

That's what would help make sense of this budget. We all know that the budget is not just numbers; it's a document that reflects our values. But it should also reflect the most cost-efficient way to meet our actual needs, based on population and use. Do we have too many fire stations? Too many cops? Too many libraries, or too few?

The mayor has had a tough budget job for the last few years, and should get credit for making big cuts without unduly harming the quality of city life.

But three years into bad times, we have balanced budgets, and still little clue about what they really mean. (For more budget news, check out www.ourmoneyphilly.com) *