During the past 11 months, the Philadelphia Tax Reform Commission (TRC) spent more than 400 hours in meetings; wrangling, debating and hammering out its final report, which was released last week. After throwing itself a gala party at the Kimmel Center where commissioners congratulated each other on a job well done, the group handed over its report and disbanded, leaving us with an inevitable question: Now that the newly re-elected Street administration has its hands on the Commission’s final report and recommendations, what happens next?

Does the administration act quickly and decisively on the recommendations? Does the report gather cobwebs in some low-level bureaucrat's inbox at the Municipal Services Building? Or is it something in between?

The TRC was formed after voters approved a ballot measure last November allowing the creation of an independent body whose mission was to recommend ways to lower taxes which in turn would bring some measure of relief to beleaguered taxpayers and hopefully help stem the tide of taxpaying city dwellers making a beeline for the suburbs.

If you ask TRC chair and former City Councilman Ed Schwartz about it -- as City Paper did -- he'll give you an earful about how, and how soon, the mayor should take action. Schwartz says he's encouraged so far at how the recommendations have been received by the powers-that-be.

"My sense is that there's a definite sense of commitment on the mayor's part," says Schwartz. "[City Finance Director] Janice Davis expressed her enthusiastic support on behalf of Mayor Street, so we're optimistic that at least those reforms that don't cost a lot of money up front could be implemented."

Some of those, Schwartz says, could include the Commission's recommendation to create a new taxpayer's advocate office, and the immediate examination of real estate assessments, especially in low-income neighborhoods, to insure that properties are assessed uniformly and in accordance with the law.

Overall, the recommendations contained in the report are ambitious, to say the least -- to gradually reduce the city wage tax to 3 percent for residents and 2.5 percent for commuters (presently, those rates are 4.54 percent and 3.96 percent, respectively) and to eliminate not only the business gross receipts tax, but the hated business privilege tax as well.

It's not going to be easy. In fact, implementing some of the Commission's recommendations is going to be downright painful, and Schwartz acknowledges as much.

"The issue is, can the city support the revenue laws," Schwartz says. "Increasing fines or fees or raising certain taxes to offer tax relief elsewhere are complicated, thorny issues. We realize that it could take months to come to agreement on some of these things, but we're saying let's get started right away. Tax reform in Philadelphia is no longer simply desirable; it's an imperative."

Mayoral spokesperson Barbara Grant says that Schwartz and his fellow commissioners can rest assured that the mayor has no intention of letting their report gather dust.

"We're reading the report -- no, check that -- we're studying the report right now," says Grant. "It's a well-reasoned, thoughtful report and it deserves a thoughtful response. It is the mayor's intention to work in close cooperation with City Council and the responsible city agencies to make it a reality."

It's the beginning of the budget season, Grant explains, and that means the usual cutting here and compromising there that's usually necessary to hammer out an economic plan, but the administration's eventual intent is to make the recommendations of the Tax Reform Commission part of the mayor's five-year plan. That idea suits TRC Executive Director Chris Dwyer just fine.

"I'm not really the guy at the political end of this stuff," Dwyer says humbly, "but with the finance director and the city controller standing behind it, and the favorable feedback we got from Gov. [Ed] Rendell's representative, I feel very positive that the mayor may well put this in his five-year plan. We made 28 recommendations -- some simple, some impossibly complicated. We actually wrote or re-wrote city ordinances where they'd be necessary or required. This is a huge plan, but some of the recommendations can be done without a significant impact on revenues."

It's just fine that the recommendations of the Commission will be implemented slowly and over a number of years, says Ed Schwartz. That was the idea in the first place.

"We're recommending implementation of the proposals over a 10-year period, from 2004 to 2014," Schwartz says. "But we need to be working hard right now to find a way to get additional revenues into the city in order to lower taxes. What we're looking out for here -- what we're fighting for -- is the economic future of the city of Philadelphia."