I DIDN'T LOVE the two tax measures that were on the November ballot. The gross-receipts tax wasn't set up right; it should have been easier on small businesses and hit big corporations harder. The sales tax was a sales tax, which means by its very nature it was regressive. I understand – in principle – why small-business groups and some progressives, like Sup. Matt Gonzalez, opposed the taxes.

But the cold political reality is this: because those tax measures went down, a lot of vulnerable San Franciscans are going to lose services they really need. This isn't an academic exercise; when Mayor Gavin Newsom is done making cuts, there's going to be blood on the floor.

Consider Bill Schruba. As Tali Woodward reports on page 18, the 92-year-old retired painter has a decent life; he has his own apartment in the Mission District and is able to live independently. That's possible in part because a public health nurse visits him regularly, to make sure he takes his medication, to check on his condition, and generally to make sure he's OK. In a few weeks that service will end because there's no money to pay for it – and dozens of seniors will be left without a crucial lifeline. Many may wind up in institutions.

Newsom's got a problem. He asked the voters to approve a tax plan that was crafted with the help of the city's most powerful big-business lobby, the Committee on JOBS, then ran a weak campaign in favor of it, with no punch until the very end. There's no practical way to try another revenue plan until the fall of 2006. So he has to patch a hole in this year's budget – and a bigger one for next year.

To do that, he has to either eliminate a lot more city jobs (infuriating the public employee unions) or slice city contracts to nonprofit service providers (angering the nonprofit world). And either way, residents across the board are going to be unhappy.

Or he has to take on the tough ones, like closing fire stations (wouldn't it be interesting if the more moderate mayor forced the more liberal supervisors who got the firefighters union's endorsement to deal with this one?).

Of course, as we point out in an editorial on page 11, this is only going to keep happening until the city overhauls its tax structure – and the time to start that is now.

Tim Redmond