AFTER THE ELECTION -night parties are over, and the ranked-choice voting algorithms are run, and the newly elected supervisors are sworn into office, the reality is going to hit hard: this year's city budget was balanced with blue smoke and mirrors and patched together with duct tape and baling wire – and it still depends on the passage Nov. 2 of two not-terribly-progressive tax measures that, as of press time, were still looking a bit shaky.

And even if the measures both pass, Proposition K, the business tax increase, is temporary and expires in four years. And unless the economy improves dramatically in the next six months, which is unlikely, the city is going to face another huge budget gap next spring. So the supervisors need to be looking, immediately, at long-term ways to bring some cash into the city.

But while the mayor and most of the Board of Supervisors backed the two tax measures (one of which is a sales tax that would hit the middle class much harder than the rich, the other a business gross-receipts tax that would hit small and medium-size businesses harder than big corporations), nobody has done a thing to go after an obvious, large pool of money that can be had without even a ballot campaign. Before the new board members start talking about raising other taxes or cutting city services, they need to move to raise Pacific Gas and Electric Co.'s franchise fee.

The fee, established through a dubious contract back in 1939, is set in perpetuity at 0.5 percent. Raising it to the national average (4 percent) would bring in more than $20 million a year. Raising it to the legal cap, 5 percent, would bring in $30 million. That's as much as either the sales or the gross-receipts tax would raise. And instead of hitting local merchants or working people, it would hit the increasingly profitable PG&E. The supervisors should immediately ask City Attorney Dennis Herrera to come up with a plan to break the 1939 deal and hike the fee.

And that's just one pot of cash. In the long term, there's hundreds of millions of dollars a year – enough to cover almost all the current deficit – available by creating a public power system. Herrera has outlined a series of steps the board can take to move toward that goal – but other than Sup. Tom Ammiano's community aggregation plan, nothing has happened. The first step: the board should immediately pass a resolution declaring that the public convenience and necessity now call for the establishment of a municipal utility – and should put the S.F. Public Utilities Commission on notice that next year's PUC budget should include detailed plans for establishing the groundwork for local public power.

The timing is critical: Mayor Gavin Newsom's handpicked PUC general manager, Susan Leal, has never supported public power – and she just fired the one person at the agency with the expertise and background to pursue a municipal utility. As Matthew Hirsch reports on page 12, Ed Smeloff, a longtime public power advocate and expert in alternative energy, was dismissed for no good reason, and his position (in effect, the public power and alternative energy job) was eliminated. Instead of keeping Smeloff, Newsom and Leal are moving Gerald "The Gagger" Green, the city planning director who recently ordered his staff to stop talking to the press, into a senior PUC job. The whole thing reeks of old-fashioned PG&E influence and signals that, without direct intervention by the board, the corrupt private utility will continue to effectively set energy policy for the city.

The election's over. It's time for the progressive board to get serious about taking on PG&E.

P.S. Another good issue for the new board: San Francisco needs a comprehensive anti-gag-order law that would prevent city agencies from silencing line workers. Hearings on the police and city planning departments' policies would be a good place to start.