Does Mayor Nutter need to bring in Mike Flaherty?

Mayor Winston: Mike, look out that window. We preside over the greatest city in the world.
Mike: Sir, that’s New Jersey.

Tom Ferrick wrote at length about how the plan to close eight library branches didn’t make sense from a policy perspective and how, ultimately, it cost Mayor Nutter just about every drop of political capital he had prior to the current budget crisis.  And that’s political capital that the Mayor will desperately need in the coming year as the economic news worsens and he prepares to negotiate contracts with the municipal worker unions.

While no poll numbers are available, anecdotal looks around the blogosphere and the reception at many of the earlier town hall meetings seem to indicate that the mayor’s popularity is pretty low.  In fact, if he tried to reprise the Open City Hall, he may get just as many people to line up to see him but I don’t think they’ll be using all five fingers when they go to shake his hand.

But aside from the ill advised plan to shutter those libraries, which by most accounts doesn’t even seem to have made sense as a budget cutting move, the Nutter Administration may have actually had a pretty good year even as he has faced down a once-in-a-generation economic crisis.   (I know, I know… that sentence smacks of “aside from that, how did you enjoy the play, Mrs. Lincoln?”)  What the mayor may have here… is a failure to communicate.  At least, that’s what Urban Direction blogger Greg Heller says in his latest post:

Certainly, for Mayor Nutter to have achieved all of those accomplishments, realizing so much of what he laid out in his campaign, and now be facing such strong public opposition, it is clear that the Mayor has made some serious mistakes.

The biggest mistake was failing to ensure that the public heard about the administration’s accomplishments.

Greg makes some good points and lays out in pretty rich detail many of the accomplishments that the mayor has under his belt for the first year.  And he may be on to something.  When we put out the call for people to assess the mayor’s first year in office, a majority of the comments were positive and reflected an understanding of the difficult times being faced by the mayor.  Those comments - like this blog - were also fair in their criticism of the mayor’s stumbles.  Considering that the readership of this blog is a little more plugged in than the average citizen to the policies that are being enacted in City Hall, it makes sense that they would have a more favorable view of Mayor Nutter.

So is it a matter of the spin?

Greg cites among Nutter’s accomplishments the hiring of Deputy Mayor for Transportation Rina Cutler who was recently in the news explaining how increase parking meter rates in Center City can actually benefit people who want to drive into town for a quick shopping trip.  The Administration was even able to convince the Parking Authority, over which it has no statutory authority, to lower short term rates at a couple of its garages.  Unfortunately, the perception of the mayor has become so infected that even a smart, coherent, forward-thinking public policy idea like this one was met with skepticism and derision.

So maybe there is a failure to communicate going on here and I’m not so sure it will be easy to fix.  The usual prescription would be to bring in a media consultant or communications specialist, invest in Obama-like online videos and go right to the people - either through advertising or virally.  But this all takes money.  How long would it be before the public learned how much was being spent on such efforts and became just as outraged at such a use of scarce public dollars?  Even using what’s leftover from Nutter’s campaign war chest might be problematic since then the criticism would focus then be on the time that the mayor and his staff are spending on public relations.

It’s a tough spot and probably only leaves Nutter with the kind of strategy that Heller suggests in his post:

There is no time for modesty; it is the Mayor’s job to shout his achievements from the rooftops. That is how to gain public support down the line when the Mayor has to make tough decisions. (emphasis mine)

Though in my neighborhood, he’d have to compete with that crazy guy who shouts from the corner at 7 AM on Saturday mornings.