Menino calls for new ideas in first speech after election

But the focus of the morning was Menino himself, returning to the public stage for the fist time since he severed the tendon that connects his thigh muscles to the top of his left kneecap while walking up the stairs at his son’s house on Nov. 8, five days after he won reelection to an unprecedented fifth term. Since that time, the city’s longest-serving mayor, famous for his nonstop schedule of neighborhood events, has been confined to hospitals and his Hyde Park home, undergoing physical and occupational therapy.

“This is great to be outside,” a smiling Menino told hundreds of executives at the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce Government Affairs breakfast. “There’s a real world outside your house. Gosh. You ever sit home and watch TV? Sorry to you folks in TV land: It’s awful.”

Paul Guzzi, the chamber president, speaking from a podium at the mayor’s right, declared to applause: “He’s back! He’s back!”

And there was much joking and attention paid to Menino’s knee. Guzzi said he had recently undergone his own ordeal after having knee replacement surgery. “I can tell you, this is not easy,” Guzzi told the mayor. “But it will get better.”

Robert E. Gallery, the Bank of America president, who introduced Menino, lightheartedly praised the mayor’s wife, who was seated in the audience, for enduring her husband’s long recuperation.

“Angela, there are lot of things you signed up for, but having him home for a month? I’m not so sure about that,” Gallery said to laughter.

Menino said repeatedly during his speech that he wants to his use his fifth term to do business differently and is not afraid to back ideas he has shot down in the past.

“There’s a new sheriff in town, and that sheriff is going to double-talk some things he said in the past,” Menino said, drawing some laughs from the audience. “I look at things with a whole new pair of eyeglasses.”

Menino has typically used his appearance for the Chamber to unveil bold new proposals, such as a 1,000-foot skyscraper he proposed during his 2006 chamber speech. Yesterday, however, the mayor reiterated several major goals he had outlined during his reelection campaign this summer.

He said he wants to revitalize Downtown Crossing, and he urged the business community to help him drum up new ideas for the former Filene’s site, which was often cited as an example of the mayor's failings by his mayoral rival, City Councilor at Large Michael F. Flaherty Jr.

“Today, there’s no more Filene’s,” the mayor said. “Let me tell you, I have to buy my suits someplace else.Let’s talk about the future. Could that be something for financial services? Could it be health care?”

The mayor urged business owners in Downtown Crossing to support his longstanding proposal for a Business Improvement District, under which businesses would voluntarily agree to pay more taxes to support street-level amenities like decorative planters and regular power-washings.

The mayor also stressed education. He said he wants business leaders to support state legislation he has filed that would allow the city to bypass union approval and transform low-performing schools into "in-district" charter schools controlled by the mayorally appointed School Committee.

“This bill is extremely important and we cannot affiord to be left behind,” Superintendent of Schools Carol R. Johnson told the chamber. She was one of the three Cabinet members to speak after the mayor, along with John F. Palmieri, director of the Boston Redevelopment Authority, and Lisa C. Signori, the mayor’s budget chief.

Menino announced one change in his inner circle.

Mitchell B. Weiss, a 33-year-old Harvard Business School graduate who was a fellow in the Menino administration in 2004 and 2005, will replace Judith Kurland as the mayor’s chief of staff, Menino said. Kurland will take a new role as the mayor’s chief of programs and partnerships, Menino said. Weiss, who is currently executive director of the Tobin Project, an education nonprofit in Cambridge, had previously worked at Merrill Lynch & Co, focusing on mergers and acquisitions.

After the speech, Menino greeted business executives who lined up to shake his hand while he remained seated. He has said it is painful for him to stand for more than 20 minutes. The mayor is scheduled to be evaluated by his doctor on Dec. 19 but said he did not know when he would return fulltime to City Hall.

“This is a serious wound,” the mayor told reporters after rising to his feet with his crutches. “And you just got deal with. And I'm dealing with it.”