No honeymoon.

That's the stark reality Democrat John F. Street will face when he's sworn in as Philadelphia's 128th mayor on Jan. 3.

It's not that partisan differences will rob Street of breathing room, since his party will control City Council by a huge margin. But his prickly personality could cause him some difficulty with some members of his party, like Councilman Michael Nutter and Councilwoman Marian Tasco.

But Street long has had a working relationship with Council President Anna Verna. If she is re-elected as president, it will to some extent ease Street's dealings with Council.

Street won't be confronted with a situation as drastic as that which Ed Rendell faced when he took office eight years ago, with the city just days away from running out of money to meet the payroll.

But the scope of the problems Street will have to deal with, within a relatively brief time period, is much broader than Rendell found on his plate.

"When you look at what has to be done in the first six months, you have to wonder why either of these guys wants to be mayor," a Democratic supporter of Street said of Street and his vanquished foe, Sam Katz, before the election.

One immediate chore confronting Street is cobbling together a budget to fund city operations in the coming fiscal year. Current spending is running about $2.7 billion annually, and Street's budget is expected to be in that ballpark.

That budget will rely heavily on transition spending plans drafted by the Rendell administration. A true glimpse at Street's priorities probably will not be discernible until the first budget over which he has total control becomes available, around February 2001.

But Street has committed himself to Rendell's gradual plan to reduce the wage tax from 4.61 to 4.46 percent over four years. This is significantly less than Katz's proposal to cut it to 4 percent in 2004.

Related to the budget is the preparation of the next five-year plan, which attempts to project city revenues and expenditures over that period. The plan is required by the Pennsylvania Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority (PICA) as a condition of the agency's providing guarantees for city debt.

"The five-year plan is thick as a phone book and it's going to be very difficult to pull together because you don't know what the ultimate cost of the labor contracts is going to be," said one source familiar with the process.

The contracts with the city's four labor unions, covering 23,000 workers, expire June 30. Compulsory arbitration with the police and firefighters unions probably will return similar contract terms for those two unions, but those terms will not be known before the budget and five-year plan are drafted.

The contracts produced by negotiations with the blue- and white-collar unions also await action by the new administration, with as-yet unknown implications for the budget.

Among the other matters awaiting attention are:

The potential bankruptcy of the city's school system. A deficit of $55 million at the end of the last school year could balloon to more than $100 million, depending on next year's budget.

The need to appoint nine new school board members. Adoption of a change in the Educational Home Rule Charter gives the new mayor authority to replace all nine members of the board effective Jan. 3. The change makes the terms of school board members identical to those of the mayor who appoints them, thus making the mayor fully accountable for managing the schools. Street has not indicated that he will be in a great hurry to begin replacing school board members, although the responsibility for schools will clearly be his.

Contract negotiations with the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers. The current contract expires at the end of August.

Deciding what to do about School Superintendent David Hornbeck. Katz committed himself to ousting Hornbeck, but Street has said the educator is making progress and should not be scapegoated for some of the system's shortcomings.

Resolving the question of where to locate new professional baseball and football stadiums, if the Rendell administration is unable to satisfactorily conclude those matters. The Eagles stadium appears destined for the sports complex area in South Philadelphia, and the Phillies ballpark may end up in the same location.

Hosting the Republican National Convention, which will brings more than 20,000 delegates and media members, as well as immense publicity, to Philadelphia in July 2000.