Reflections, regrets: 'I'm going to make mistakes'

Regrets, he has a few.

Mayor Nutter spoke yesterday with the Daily News about his first 22 months in office - both the mistakes he has learned from and his plans for the future.

Here are a few of his thoughts:

HOW TO BE MAYOR

"I'm a lifelong learner and I'm still learning. And because I really am human and still the guy from 55th and Larchwood, I'm going to continue to learn and continue to grow. From time to time I'm going to make mistakes because I'm human. It's a constant reflection process for me to try to figure out how can I be better."

TAKING CRITICISM

"As an incumbent, you're always going to be subject to a tremendous amount of advice, criticism, scrutiny and the like. We've had to make some pretty tough decisions that affect people in a variety of ways."

LIBRARIES

Nutter put the proposal to close 11 library branches at the top of his list of regrets.

"Clearly that was a situation where we could have done things differently; we could have done them better, not taken a good portion of the city and the population through a very difficult period," Nutter said, noting that ultimately the city was able to achieve savings by reducing hours across the library system.

WORKING WITH COUNCIL

"We're all, quite honestly, trying to make a little bit of an adjustment to ourselves and each other. I'm friends with the overwhelming majority of the folks up there. . . . In this position, we find ourselves in a situation where, from time to time, I either may have a slightly different viewpoint myself or sometimes I have to say no to certain things or I can't do certain things. I think, on a more human level - put the elected office aside, put the politics aside - on a purely human scale, one of the most difficult things to do is to try to say no to a friend."

TOP PRIORITY

Nutter said that job creation would be the top priority for his administration, but quickly added: "The reality is, in [the job as mayor] you don't have to work on one thing; you have to work on 50 things."