The nation's mayors, much like the White House and Congress, aren't quite sure how big of a peace dividend will result from planned cuts in defense spending. But they want half _ whatever the amount. The mayors open their annual summer meeting here today poised to demand that much of the defense savings be funneled to cities to help ease education, drug and housing problems they increasingly blame on the White House and Congress. ``The federal government has walked away from the cities of America and now we are beginning to see the dangerous results,'' said Boston Mayor Raymond Flynn, a leading spokesman for the mayors. ``There are signs that cannot be ignored, even through the best set of rose-colored glasses,'' Flynn said. He listed among his examples gang violence in his and several other cities and recent tensions in New York resulting from court proceedings against whites accused of participating in a mob attack last summer that left a black teen-ager dead. ``This isn't a Republican or a Democratic problem alone or a big-city problem alone or a liberal or conservative mayors' problem alone,'' Flynn said. ``This is an American problem that is gnawing at the social conscience of the American public.'' Flynn this year moves up to the vice presidency of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, which is dominated by big-city Democratic mayors who are frequent critics of the Republican Bush administration. But even the organization's Republicans are voicing rising frustration with White House priorities. ``We have considerable mandates placed upon us by the federal government with less and less funding to carry them out,'' said Republican Mayor Robert Isaac of Colorado Springs, Colo., who takes over as president of the conference. ``We are not asking for a handouts. We are asking for fairness.'' The mayors will debate dozens of policy statements on an array of issues, with a clear consensus in advance of the meeting in favor of a proposal to demand that cities get half of any peace dividend. But after a decade of cuts in federal aid to cities, few mayors are optimistic their demand will be met. ``I'm not so naive as to believe the White House and the Congress are going to listen to us mayors,'' Flynn said in an interview Thursday. ``What we as an organization have to do is generate political support. American cities are in deep trouble.'' The mayors also will consider adopting dozens of policy statements on health care, housing and other issues _ many similar to stances taken at past meetings. Another asks the federal government not to hurt local real estate markets by selling at bargain-basement prices properties it controls because of savings and loan failures. Isaac, whose area has been hard hit by S&L failures, also is lobbying to get the federal government to surrender some of the properties to local governments for affordable-housing programs. ``Money for housing programs has been drying up,'' the Colorado Springs mayor said. ``I see this as a tremendous opportunity to do some good.'' The six-day meeting opens today with the first joint meeting of organization task forces on drug control and homelessness. At a meeting last week to plan the conference, several mayors said street tensions in their cities appeared to be on the rise heading into the summer months. ``This isn't a time for happy talk,'' said Flynn. ``A decade of neglect of America's cities has created an abominable mix that presents a dangerously tense situation for this summer and years to come.''
