This video is taken from YouTube, and was produced and edited by International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement and not by WHYY.

By Patrick Cobbs

Mayor Michael Nutter made his 2010 budget proposal official Thursday with an address to City Council. He’s calling it “the people’s budget” because of all the good civic input over the last several months.

But I think the honeymoon might be over. It was the fists flying (see 2nd video) on the City Council balcony that convinced me.

Who knew budgets could get so serious?

The altercation came when several Police Civil Affairs Officers tried to remove two men who had previously refused to sit down when police asked them. I saw one of the men throwing punches after the officers tried to grab him.

Police would not give me any information on the scene, but later they confirmed the arrest of Wali Rahman, 32, and Franklin Moses, 54. Both men face multiple charges including aggravated assault and resisting arrest.

I also did not sit down after police asked me (primarily because you can’t see anything if you sit down in those balconies). But then I was not holding up a huge sign against the safety glass and shouting, “Shareef Lee Jones, Frankford Charter, killed by Philadelphia Police,” just as City Council was voting to recognize the Frankford Charter Football Team for its national championship in the 160 pound division.

Also I am not a black man and a member of the Uhuru Movement, (called “anti-government” by officers on the scene), as these men are.

A few things struck me under that gilded ceiling as police were dragging the two men away. One, did former Mayor John Street, who had recently passed through that very balcony and who knows about fists-a-cuffs in council chambers, long for the old days? Two, with the hope of the citizen budget forums behind us, is this violence a harbinger of the tough work the city faces going forward?

And, to be honest, I was also worried about City Budget Director Stephen Agostini.

For him, as the quintessential “man in the middle,” the next few months could get a little hairy. Soon he will collect all the hard details for what the Mayor’s proposal means for every department in the city. And after he hands that ten pound book to council, he and the other department heads will start their day-long sessions providing testimony to council about the new budget.

He will field their questions, address their concerns and, in short, get a lot of their flack over things like Nutter’s very public request that city councilors forgo city vehicles, which many of them still drive. Or his efforts to limit the DROP program where city councilors can essentially collect retirement benefits while still working. (Like Council members Anna C. Verna, Marian B. Tasco, Frank DiCicco, Jack Kelly, Frank Rizzo and Donna Reed Miller already do.)

There is more, a lot more in this budget to upset council members. And if not them, then any number of the civil service groups and especially the unions that were represented well at the meeting on Thursday.

In sum, Nutter promised to collect millions from “tax deadbeats”, he promised to cut an additional 250 jobs from the city rolls, he promised not to “lay off one police officer or one fire fighter in this city,” he promised not close any libraries or health centers, he promised to open more than 40 pools for the summer, he promised to continue to pick up residential trash for free, and he promised to keep tightening on city government spending across the board.

“But you know, as they say, nothing in life is free,” he warned.

To get the rest of the money he needs, Nutter is proposing a three-year temporary sales tax increase from 7 to 8 percent, and a temporary real estate tax increase of 16 mills in FY2010 plus a slightly smaller increase in FY2011. Though he also promised to, by 2011, begin overhauling the real estate tax system so that it’s easier on low income homeowners.

And one of the most interesting (that is, potentially explosive) proposals of the day, to my ears, was this: he plans to lobby the state to declare the city pension program, which is now 50-percent unfunded with $8.4 billion in liabilities, “severely distressed.” Doing so would allow him to renegotiate union pensions to require higher employee contributions for a lower payout.

So if council is poised to come down hard on the Mayor and the city budget team, a few union heavies are too. Evidence: the plentiful boos that filled the hall frequently Thursday morning from under SEIU and other union signs.

Then there are the city’s service agencies. Admittedly, for this crowd there were at least some qualifiers.

Kenneth Austin, a volunteer for the Women’s Community Revitalization Project, liked that the libraries would stay open but he worried that two years straight of real estate tax increases would make housing less affordable for low income people.

“There’s already a lot of people that don’t have a home to go to,” he said. “Those property taxes are only gonna put people that can’t afford their rent and their taxes now - more of them are gonna be on the street and they’ll be homeless. So where are all these people gonna go?”

Gloria Gilman, chair of Philadelphia Neighborhood Networks was glad to hear that some essential city services would not be touched but she felt compelled to read between the lines of Nutter’s plans.

“Please notice that when he spoke about the cuts in labor,” she said. [Nutter emphasized fiscal benefits 20 years out, not right away.] “What he’s doing is using the budget crisis as an excuse to attack labor.”

And Sergeant At-Arms Jim Devine of the Philadelphia Fire Fighters Union had a similar read on a different issue.

“It’s not what he tells you, it’s what he doesn’t tell you,” Devine said. “[By refusing to fill vacancies] he’s already laid off fire fighters through attrition. We have over 200 less than we did before.”

According to Devine there have been devastating fires recently that could have been contained much better if response time was brought back down to acceptable levels. And the only way to do that is to get those 200 fire fighters back, he said.

Clearly, then, budgets are serious business.

To get a glimpse of just how serious, I will be checking in with Stephen Agostini as he attempts to negotiate the coming minefields. I’m already crossing my fingers.

Patrick Cobbs is a contributing writer for It’s Our City