Nutter

MAYOR NUTTER yesterday announced that J.P. Morgan and Loop Capital Markets will be the brokers for a possible sale of Philadelphia Gas Works, a big step forward for the administration's goal of privatizing the utility. The firms would profit only if the utility is sold, and the city would go ahead with the sale only if the price is right, Nutter said. The process is expected to take a year. The contracts are designed to encourage a higher sale price. A $1.6 billion sale would pay the firms a combined $7.2 million; a $1.85 billion sale, the estimate a city consultant came up with last year, would get them $12 million, Nutter said.

EVEN IF City Council were to provide the Fire Department with the money needed to end the controversial rotating "brownouts" of fire stations, the Nutter administration said it would still stand by the policy. During his budget presentation to Council yesterday, Fire Commissioner Lloyd Ayers was asked if given the $3.8 million the city says it saves from brownouts, which began in 2010, would he discontinue the policy? "If Council came up with $3.8 million to eliminate brownouts and I were allowed to?

Mayor Nutter hailed the continued decline in crime across the city, drawing particular attention to the precipitous drop in homicides in the first three months of 2013. Nutter, appearing Monday before The Inquirer editorial board, cautioned that "a quarter does not make a year. " But the homicide and violent-crime stats for the first quarter of this year are the lowest of his 5+ years in office. ... Last year began with a violent three months, Nutter said, and the police "spent the rest of the year trying to recover.

District Attorney Seth Williams blasted Mayor Nutter on Monday for "flatlining" his budget, saying there has been "no communication as to what our priorities are" and calling the administration's budget process "inadequate and disrespectful. " Williams delivered his blistering assessment in testimony before Council. He said Nutter proposed to increase police, prisons, and other budgets, while not even providing enough money to cover mandated salary hikes in the District Attorney's Office.

WHILE MAYOR Nutter was at Yale University on Monday talking about gun violence, his anticrime efforts back in Philly took a beating from the city's top prosecutor. At a City Council hearing, District Attorney Seth Williams lambasted Nutter's proposed budget for the D.A.'s office of about $32 million, similar to the current year's funding. Williams said a flatlined budget would, in effect, be a cut for him because he's taken on new responsibilities and costs in recent years. "What we do is simply not valued by the mayor," said Williams, who is asking for $2.8 million more.

Philadelphia City Council President Darrell L. Clarke first proposed selling advertising on city property as a way to raise extra cash in November 2011, and he championed the idea again two months later from the stage at the Academy of Music before Mayor Nutter's second inauguration. Reporters afterward wanted to know if Nutter and the new Council president could get along, considering their past political animosities. If Clarke's municipal advertising proposal is any barometer, that relationship hasn't been going very well.

Mayor Nutter and other top city officials met privately Thursday with dozens of prospective investors in an apparent effort to promote the city's borrowing efforts. The two-day Philadelphia Investor Conference opened at the Comcast Center with panel discussions highlighting the city and regional economies and the prominent roles of health care and higher education. It was scheduled to continue Friday with tours of the city and its three capital-intensive subsidiaries, the Water Department, Philadelphia International Airport, and the Philadelphia Gas Works.

IN HIS PROPOSED BUDGET, Mayor Nutter did not seek any additional money for the Sheriff's Department despite its expanding responsibilities, but Sheriff Jewell Williams on Tuesday asked City Council for a 30 percent increase. That increase amounts to $4.1 million for 100 new deputies, a budget director, a computer-support employee and a clerical position. Williams said there were 230 deputies in 2008 compared with 194 now. "We get downplayed because we don't get the manpower we deserved," Williams said.

Mayor Nutter told reporters Tuesday there had been no specific threats or incidents in Philadelphia, but he said local law enforcement and emergency personnel would be at "a heightened level of security" in response to the Boston explosions. The city still expects to see about 40,000 runners compete in Philadelphia's Broad Street Run on May 5, the mayor said, but he said there would be "a more visible security presence" in place to make sure that participants and spectators are safe.

SO, PHILLY loses another firefighter, after which Mayor Nutter states, "We must never forget the grave risks that these heroic public servants take every day at a moment's notice on behalf of us all. " Now living in Nashville, I read the Daily News every day on my Kindle and I find Mayor Nutter's statement somewhat ironic. As someone who used to live one block from where Capt. Michael Goodwin died protecting my old neighborhood, I urge Michael Nutter to never forget the words of his statement above when he tries to fight the salary arbitration case against the firefighters, or refers to the noble police force of my hometown.