shift the emphasis in spending to police, cleaning up the city and restaffing public health centers.
All with no new taxes, although homeowners may face higher property-tax bills because of assessment changes the city has sought.
"To achieve these goals," Goode said in his budget address, "some sacrifice is necessary."
Still, several minutes later, Goode said, "it is a budget that is consistent with our basic sense of human compassion, decency and caring for those most in need."
The mayor's proposed budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1 attacks the $200 million gap between the money the city will have and will need partly by whacking large chunks out of several programs usually associated with compassion.
"A mean-spirited budget" is how Councilwoman Augusta A. Clark described it after a meeting with Goode.
Said Finance Director Betsy C. Reveal, "This is a very tough budget."
Tough as it is, it could get tougher. The budget makes about $53 million in assumptions that could fall apart if the city loses a lawsuit over real estate taxes, fails to cut employee health and welfare costs as predicted, loses probable lawsuits over cuts in mental-health care, and can't force local courts to cut 500 employees.
What Goode proposed yesterday is in sharp contrast to the direction he was headed last year on social spending.
Just a year ago, Goode spoke glowingly in his budget address of the "more open, honest, fair and compassionate city" Philadelphia had become.
In 1988, Goode said of AIDS, "There is no greater threat to our society."
Now he is seeking to take $3.4 million out of the city's $7.5 million AIDS budget, a 45 percent cut.
In 1988, Goode created a grant-review system "to preserve our community, cultural and recreational programs while avoiding unwanted abuses."
Now his budget would wipe out all $10 million of the grants given out under what is called the Class 500 program, which serves, among other groups, the handicapped, children and the elderly.
In 1988, Goode asserted, "We demonstrate compassion for our homeless and jobless."
Now the homeless program, including mental-health services and shelters, would lose about $16.3 million of its $37 million budget. Subsidies for job training would lose $1 million.
The shouting already has begun.
During Goode's address, some protesters hollered their objections, although the catcalls never made the mayor break stride.
City officials will be hearing a lot of that in coming weeks, both in and out of the budget hearings scheduled for late April.
"Discipline," said Chamber of Commerce President Nicholas DeBenedictis, is going to be needed to hold the line on the budget.
"Now we're going to have every special-interest group - including business - coming in here," DeBenedictis said, standing in the Council chambers after Goode's speech.
Already true.
Council yesterday adopted a resolution by Councilwoman Joan L. Krajewski calling on the Police Department to cancel its decision to stop paying for the food and veterinary care of retired police dogs.
On a more sweeping issue, the Council meeting yesterday morning was packed with homeless people carrying signs such as, "Cutbacks means death for children of the poor."
One member of the group, Tyrone Ward, began to address the meeting, but Councilman James J. Tayoun wanted to know whether he was a party to a lawsuit against several Council members. The question never was answered as all hell broke loose.
"Speak, speak, speak," people in the audience yelled, drowning out Coleman's efforts to quiet them. Several Council members left, but 12 remained to listen.
"If you think by walking away that we will go away, we won't go away," Ward said. "We will be here every week. . . . We elected you to do a job, and that job means every living individual in the city of Philadelphia."
Afterward, Coleman seemed shaken by the choices confronting the city, a reaction sure to be shared as the impact of the cuts sinks in.
"It hurts the hell out of me," Coleman said. "I guess I wish I was not a part of it. . . . It's bad. I feel bad that I'm a part of all this. . . . It's bad, it's bad. I just wish my time was out in Council."
Coleman, 66, who has told some associates this may be his last term, said he understands that the city has "gone just as far as we can go" in terms of paying for programs.
He reminisced about growing up in a small Mississippi town, one of 11 children of a preacher who had little money, just as many of the people whose services now may be cut also are poor.
"I think I would enjoy doing other things more," Coleman said, speaking softly. "The problem is great and I take it too seriously. If they didn't mirror me, what I was, I wouldn't take it as seriously."
How seriously should this budget be taken? An interesting question given what happened last year.
Goode sought $148 million in new taxes as part of his budget. Council trashed that plan, instead approving about $80 million for the city and instead hoping for some $50 million in state money for courts, which to nobody's surprise never did arrive.
But last year, Goode continually shifted his estimates of the deficit, and in late 1987, in his tough re-election campaign, had been saying the budget would be balanced with no new taxes.
Council was not a trusting body back then. Nor was it united.
This year, Council leaders who previously pushed for greater spending on social programs, notably Appropriations Chairman John F. Street, say they have reversed course.
Street and other Council members have held extensive talks with administration officials and were briefed a week in advance on the shape of what was coming.
Further, Council was able to negotiate with Goode the commitment, weeks before the budget presentation, to increase the police force, clean up the city and even abandon a bureaucratic oddity that the mayor staunchly defended just months earlier: the dual jobs of city representative and commerce director.
"There is no question in my mind that the mayor's approach is the correct one," Street said.
Councilman Angel L. Ortiz called the budget inhumane and said he would vote against it. But the climate on Council has shifted, he added.
"Given the nature of the Council right now," Ortiz said, "there probably are enough votes to approve the budget."
