But here, you would be wrong.

I met Rosenberg, a retired equipment salesman disabled with spinal stenosis, at the Office of Administrative Review. He was there to fight three tickets, two for violating Section PM-302.3 of the Philadelphia Property Maintenance Code.

That ordinance states that it's unlawful to have weeds or grass exceed 10 inches in height. It's enforced by not one but three city departments - L&I, Streets, and, in a city of 295 murders this year, the police. When a police spokeswoman was asked about weed enforcement, imagine her joy. Sighing ensued.

Except Rosenberg didn't have weeds, but prized heirloom plants - sunflowers, heritage raspberries, roses, herbs - lovingly installed by neighbor Sally Siddiqi, an honored landscape architect who created the West Mount Airy garden four years ago, along with neighbor Victoria Frain, as a gift to the community.

Siddiqi tended the garden, spending a few thousand dollars on plants, until this summer, when she broke her arms and Frain was caring for an ailing relative. The small corner plot became overgrown and unattended.

Let your garden grow

"This is the classic kind of ridiculous story. There are so many vacant spaces in the city, but we build a community garden and get tickets from the city," says Siddiqi. She took a day off from her Manhattan job to fight City Hall with Rosenberg. The irony is that "community gardens are there to stop crime and bring neighborhoods together."

Except this garden became the crime and failed to bring the neighborhood together. Someone complained. The Streets official issuing Rosenberg the ticket said, "It's the squeaky wheel that gets the grease."

Rosenberg was fortunate in that he was assigned Shawn Murphy as hearing master. A most compassionate fellow, Murphy is a product of Mayfair, son of an ironworker and a junkie mother. He used to be a marketing analyst at Goldman Sachs, where he advised clients with accounts of $25 million or more. Then he returned to "do something good for the city, and give something back."

Murphy hears cases on spitting, public urination, smoking violations, trash, dog waste. "It's a lot of everyday life," he says. "I wish the mayor could spend a few hours here."

Established in 1995, the hearing office last year handled 10,000 appeals of 85,000 violations. "Most of these disputes are quality-of-life issues," executive director Paula Weiss says, including the matter of a disruptive goat in the Northeast.

Greene Country Towne

"The guy is impossible. The guy is nasty. I phoned about the dog waste and he got caught with the weeds," she says. "He just doesn't take care of his property. The weeds are growing everywhere."

In a matter of minutes, Murphy dismissed the two tickets from the Streets department, one for the "weeds," another for Rosenberg's leaving dog waste in plastic bags on his property. Rosenberg says he was too incapacitated to reach the trash can. Murphy couldn't do anything about the other weed violation, which L&I issued on a different day and hadn't come through the system. Perhaps they will all meet again.

Curious, Murphy asked for pictures of the garden.

Alas, Rosenberg had none.

After the violations were issued, the community garden was torn up. It just seemed easier to do.

This week, with the city euphoric from the World Series, Mayor Nutter did not joke. Instead, faced with a $1 billion deficit in five years, he ruined many a resident's lunch.

Business and wage taxes will not be raised, but citizens will enjoy no cuts until 2015, which seems a long time from now, especially in this economy. The reductions were to have made the city fiscally competitive and to stimulate growth.

So, shortly after noon, Nov. 6, 2008, the honeymoon officially ended, a year after Nutter was elected.

The city will cut 820 full-time and 2,000 part-time positions, and chop 200 unfilled police vacancies. Police overtime will be slashed. Five engine and two ladder companies will be shuttered. Plus no more underwriting the Mummers' plumage.

The city will be less clean, kind, generous. Snow plowing will stop on small streets. Bulk trash collection will end. Eleven libraries will close, some in the poorest neighborhoods. Most city pools will be drained, along with three of five ice rinks.

Golden oldies

Pennsylvania, I've long observed, is more generous to its older citizens than to its young. The same can be said of Philadelphia. The city's budget is shackled by pension payouts, costly cement shoes that impede the administration from implementing progressive initiatives.

In 2006, the city had more pensioners than active employees - 33,907 versus 28,701 - with annual compensation ranging from $29,000 to $42,000, in addition to Social Security. Most employees contributed less than 2 percent, far less than employees do in other cities.

The disparity will increase with job cuts and an aging workforce, according to the Pew Charitable Trusts and Economy League of Philadelphia's report, "Philadelphia's Quiet Crisis: The Rising Cost of Employee Benefits." By 2012, pension and retiree health-care costs are projected to devour 28 percent of the city budget.

If radical measures aren't taken, one in every four tax dollars will support retired employees - the city's past - yet we won't provide pools for children or libraries in Mantua and Fishtown. Who knows? Maybe the casinos can go there.

The kindest cuts

On Saturday, at a benefit for the Free Library of all places, I asked Mayor Nutter if I could help trim the budget. He looked alarmed - perhaps because he has chosen to hold hearings in private, perhaps because he doesn't known how well I can shop a sale - but I was serious. My thoughts:

No city cars unless they're essential for work. Take SEPTA. Bike.

The mayor and top staff are taking pay cuts. Since Council takes the summer off, their paychecks should be suspended, too.

Reduce the size of Council, beginning with the seven members who are double-dipping - or is it dripping? - through DROP, the Deferred Retirement Option Program. Don't defer retirement. Retire now.

Frank Rizzo introduced a bill to limit nepotism. No. Eliminate it. Cronyism, too. Of course, this would end Rizzo's career. And that of a third of the city's workforce.

Oh, and Latrice Bryant. Particularly after Wilson Goode Jr.'s chief legislative aide wrote that the entire summer is "a period in which I was not even contractually required to work. But I did." Gone! That's $90,000 saved. Fox29 could hire her as a commentator.

The mayor proposes a private-sector task force to increase efficiency and work with the unions, while encouraging individuals and corporations to become involved. Great. See if smart, rich people can figure out new revenue streams before next year, which is essential. That's when all four union contracts expire - those workers collect 58 cents of every city dollar - and the fighting will begin anew.

at 215-854-2586 or kheller@phillynews.com.

What a night.

In Philadelphia, what a week.

Possibly, most memorable week ever.

Barack Obama, a master orator, gave a beautiful, uplifting speech that was characteristically inclusive and uplifting.

John McCain also gave a beautiful, uplifting speech that was inclusive and uplifting, celebrating a patriotism that includes everyone, not voters of a specific demographic.

What struck me watching them both speak was how far one man had come in America, and how much the other has given.

John McCain has given far more to this country than it has ever asked of him. He has served the nation almost every day of his adult life.

Barack Obama is the son of an immigrant from Kenya and a middle-class family mother from Kansas. For the first time in 12 years, we are looking at a man who ran for the nation's highest office who is not the son of a president, a senator, a millionaire or a four-star admiral. The same holds true for Joe Biden.

This has been a historic campaign, not only for the distinction of its candidates -- the first African American candidate of a major party, two women running for president and vice president, a war hero -- but also its length, cost and character.

We can only hope, as both men suggested, that we can put such divisions and petty partisan politics behind us, as well as the bile that came to characterize so many attack ads. And that McCain, in his return to Congress, can also return to his true maverick status, finally free of the choke of this administration's policies, and be the true leader he is.

The economy effects us all. The current crisis is color-blind and indifferent to class, religion or background. The same is true of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and America's place in the world.

There are already hate-filled posts up today on the website, as if this will change anything. Consider the elegance and grace of both men's speeches last night. Think how charitable President Bush was in extending congratulations to Obama. Remember that anger and hate impoverish us. They never really get citizens anywhere, that these are the emotions that fuel terrorists and thugs, and can  

With any luck, we'll say goodby to Joe the Plumber, "the real Virginia," slurs about socialism, deciding who is a true patriot and American, questioning someone's motivation and religion (as if being Muslim, as Colin Powell memorably argued, is wrong in a democracy founded for freedom of faith), Acorn stealing votes (didn't happen), and trying to divide America into a color war.

By Karen Heller

Inquirer Columnist

Buzz up!