But getting a guy - or gal - in the top job is only the beginning. Nutter has spoken extensively about changing the culture of policing in Philadelphia and attacking violence head-on.
Nutter's plans include declaring crime emergencies in the city's worst neighborhoods, which could allow cops to close streets or set curfews. And he has said he will encourage cops to use "stop and frisk" police tactics to seize illegal guns.
But Carr also stressed that Nutter will have to work with residents to fight crime.
"Job number one will be winning the trust of the citizenry," Carr said.
Taylor agreed that Nutter will have to be inclusive as he develops crime-fighting plans.
"He has obviously already chatted pretty diligently with the folks with the pointy-headed hats," said Taylor. "I would hope that he's really getting input from a broad group of folks, and not just academic folks."
That kind of input will be key as Nutter moves forward, Taylor said.
"Michael Nutter has said very clearly what he's going to do on day one," Taylor said. "It will be very interesting to see what happens on day one, day two, day 30."
Regardless, a rapid turnaround in homicides seems unlikely.
"It's going to be one of these incremental things. We're not going to see a dramatic falloff," Carr predicted. "They have to constantly monitor what is working and look at the underlying trends."
Pension & health-care costs
Say what you will about leadership and vision, a Philadelphia mayor can't achieve his goals if he can't pay the bills. And in recent years, two of the city's most significant expenses have been growing explosively: pensions and health care for its 30,000 employees.
Although Nutter said little on the campaign trail about negotiating contracts with municipal workers, there's no doubt that pensions and health benefits will be the biggest items on the table when talks begin on contracts to take effect July 1.
This year, the city is paying about $430 million to the pension fund, a $4.1 billion pot of money jointly managed by the city and the four municipal unions. That's more than double the amount that the city paid into the fund when Mayor Street took office in 2000.
That's the crux of the problem. Present and past mayors - not only Street, but also Ed Rendell, Wilson Goode, Bill Green and Frank Rizzo - chronically underpaid the pension fund, leaving it with barely half the money it ought to have to meet obligations.
The city's actuaries - statisticians who work over city payroll figures, life-expectancy estimates, investment-performance reports and other data to calculate the city's pension needs - reported in May that the city's retirement system is underfunded by $3.9 billion.
The city has a plan to make up for those underpayments. It will require record contributions over the next 20 years, but less if the pension fund's investments are unusually successful, or if the unions agree to reduced pension benefits in the future, perhaps for newly hired city employees, if not those already on the payroll.
Union leaders say they're not to blame for past underfunding of the pension, so it shouldn't be taken from their hides. But private employers throughout the country have been moving away from defined-benefit plans like the city's, which guarantee certain payments to retirees, and toward defined-contribution plans in which the employer makes a payment up-front and workers invest the money themselves.
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