Don't -- you -- believe it!

Y'all know that Mayor Nutter drew up the budget cutting plan in order to have plausible, convincing paperwork to take to Treasury, don't you?

You don't think he would actually shut down fire houses, libraries, and pools, do you?

He laid out a plan with realistic numbers to portray a serious situation to Treasury in the most dire terms possible. He showed the feds a worst-case scenario and presented it to them as the only-case scenario. He was apparently a leader in that kind of thinking, as it's my understanding that he led a group of other big-city mayors in delivering his letter to Treasury. Under threat of having turned away cities with believable budget shortfalls that could result in people dying in fires, Treasury may be more likely to consider Philadelphia and other major metropolitan areas in future bailout packages.

In other words, threatening Treasury with closing firehouses, libraries, and pools could avoid our Daily News publishing the headline, Obama to Philly: Drop Dead.

Some of my closest friends aren't fans of Mayor Nutter. I guess I like him more than Mayor Street (which isn't saying much), if only because he seems to go to work and, you know, get work done -- an unusual practice among public servants in this town. In any event, when he says he'll close firehouses, libraries, and pools, I don't believe a word of it.