Mr. Mayor, here's Hub reality

IT'S TIME to fix the potholes?

The city is losing population and crime is on the rise. So, Mayor Thomas M. Menino decided to take a tough stand against bumpy roads.

Menino directed his public-works commissioner to stop issuing permits allowing contractors to cut into the pavement because ``streets are not being restored to their original condition and I'm tired of it."

Menino first earned a reputation as the dedicated urban mechanic who gets the streets paved and the trash picked up on time. So, it's understandable he wants to refocus attention on the bumpy roads beneath his city-owned SUV.

But a new claim to mayoral fame is urgently needed. The city's needs are changing, and so must the mayor's priorities.

Boston lost 30,107 residents in the first half of this decade. The loss represented a 5.1 percent fall from the city's population of 589,141 residents in 2000. It was the seventh-highest percentage decrease among large US cities, a drop that ranks the city among the biggest population losers of any major municipality in the country. Cincinnati had the steepest drop from 2000 to 2005, followed by Detroit, New Orleans, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Flint, Mich.

Menino quibbles with the numbers put out by the US Census Bureau. He argues they don't count students, immigrants, and public-housing residents.

Wake up and smell the latte, Mr. Mayor.

People are moving to places like Worcester, Plymouth, and Peabody -- and beyond -- because they can't afford to live in Boston.

This city is on its way to becoming ``a boutique town, catering to a smaller number of elites," as Harvard economics professor Edward L. Glaeser recently pointed out. The current development emphasis on trendy condos, lofts, small luxury hotels, and shops ignores the city's basic housing needs.

Meanwhile, the mean streets of Dorchester and Roxbury get meaner. Community leaders are begging for help. But, Menino at first declined an offer from Governor Mitt Romney to have State Police help Boston's understaffed police force patrol city streets. While this is an admittedly short-term solution, Menino's rebuff gave off the usual scent of ego and politics. This mayor does not share turf gladly. He changed his mind about Romney's offer, only after an outcry from Boston city councilors and a crime-weary community.

After winning big last November, Menino promised big ideas and big changes in the people around him. The city is still waiting for both.

So far, the mayor's biggest idea involves his promotion of a 1,000-foot-high office tower for Boston. Hopefully, future ideas can be executed closer to ground level.

A major personnel shift is underway. Menino's press secretary just announced he is leaving. His chief of staff already departed, along with his commissioner of public works and fire commissioner. His police chief and superintendent of schools are on their way out the door. However, replacements for these positions have not been named. The police commissioner search, in particular, is already controversial, with Menino under heavy pressure to appoint a black police chief.

It's legacy time for the mayor. The personnel choices he makes and the direction he takes the city will define the 21st-century lap of his administration. If the schools don't improve and crime isn't better controlled, more people will leave town. The hunt for jobs and more affordable housing already provide strong incentive. This is not ``gloom and doom" as the mayor likes to label it, it's Hub reality.

Fidelity Investments, for example, is opening a customer-service center in Jacksonville, Fla., creating 1,200 jobs there by 2010. It decided the place to grow is somewhere other than Boston. Where it grows, people will follow. The city's homegrown business base is fast eroding. This week, Filene's department store, once a retail giant, was reduced to a 12-inch metal marker.

The city is changing, and City Hall has to keep up with it.

Menino is still the neighborhood mayor who knows every bump in the road. He is going back to the basics that worked for him when he first took office -- and that's OK, up to a point.

People do want smooth roads. But they also need safe streets, quality schools, jobs, and affordable housing.

Fixing today's urban landscape means more than fixing potholes.

Joan Vennochi's e-mail address is vennochi@globe.com.