DN Editorial: COUNCIL HAS BIG ISSUES TO GRAPPLE WITH, AND RE-ELECTION SHOULDN'T BE ONE OF THEM

CITY COUNCIL comes back into session today. We hope.

Oh, there will be a public gathering of Council members in Room 400 of City Hall. Anna Verna will bang her gavel. Marian Tasco could introduce a bill. Bill Green will disagree with someone.

But it's an election year, so there's a chance Council will be there in body, but not in the kind of spirit we need. The members - at least those who are running - will be tempted to put off hard decisions and try to make everyone happy.

But Council begins this year with a changed landscape: Four members have announced they won't be running again. While this will certainly make elections interesting, it also makes Council's agenda potentially thrilling: Four members have nothing to lose! They can do the heavy lifting and make bold moves. Are you listening, Verna, Krajewski, Miller and Kelly?

As for the rest of Council: You'll be facing a number of hard decisions that will only get harder if you put them off. And believe us, you're not going to be able to make everyone happy.

Start with row-office reform. The city has already succeeded in getting rid of one of its antiquated elected offices, the Clerk of Quarter Sessions. (So why is one of the items on Council's docket a resolution honoring Vivian Miller, who oversaw the clerk's failure to keep records of collect tens of millions of dollars in bail, fines and fees, losing the city tens of millions of dollars?)

We don't need to elect anyone to run elections (the city commissioners) or conduct sheriff sales and transport prisoners (the sheriff). Both offices have been beset by scandal recently, so the time to get rid of them is now. People will be unhappy - political people who use row offices as patronage bastions. But we can't afford them.

Speaking of pissing people off, it will be tempting for Council to pass a rosy budget that angers no one: no tax hikes, no big cuts, just ice cream and puppies all around.

It might even be possible, for a while. The city often finishes its budget before the state does. With city tax revenues stabilizing, the mayor and Council could hold off on grappling with state cuts (the city gets $595 million from the commonwealth this year), then voila: ice cream for all.

But big cuts are coming, probably to social services and schools, among other things.

Rather than waiting for this bad news and then letting the Nutter administration catch up with midyear cuts, which, conveniently, could be done after the May primary, Council should use its budget hearings to ask hard questions of department heads. Especially how they are preparing for the consequences of the cuts. For instance, will the end of the adultBasic insurance program mean a bigger burden on city health centers?

One more thing: Council should eliminate DROP. It almost goes without saying. Almost. *