After nine years of annual addresses that offered new projects and programs for city residents, Mayor Michael B. Coleman began talking tonight about what those residents can do for Columbus.

In his 10th State of the City address, delivered from the auditorium of a newly renovated East High School, the mayor inched closer still to endorsing a potential ballot issue to raise Columbus' 2 percent income tax. Without more money, he said, city government will have to impose cuts "that will make the decisions of the past month seem trivial."

"I know this is a difficult time to say it's time for new revenue," Coleman said. "But the consequence of inaction is so enormous. The quality of life as we know it in Columbus is at stake."

Coleman again held off on calling directly for a tax increase, although he praised former Mayor Tom Moody for championing the last increase in 1982 and Mayor James A. Rhodes for winning approval of the first income tax in 1948. Coleman said he's waiting for recommendations due in two weeks from an economic-advisory panel that has been poring over city finances for the past year.

He vowed to seek more savings in the budget - through options such as selling off city-owned land, merging departments and scaling back employee benefits - but said Columbus could face a 2010 budget gap of up to $50 million unless it takes in more money.

Closing a gap that size with cuts alone would mean laying off 200 police officers, picking up trash every other week, ending code enforcement and shutting down the Department of Recreation and Parks, the mayor said. The 2009 budget approved by City Council members Feb. 9 eliminated more than 140 jobs, closed 11 recreation centers, drastically cut back yard-waste collection and reduced a number of other services.

"Part of my job is to tell you not just what you want to hear, but also what you need to hear," Coleman said. "So I ask for your help."

Council President Michael C. Mentel said he'll wait, too, for the advisory group's report before weighing in on a potential tax increase, but he called Coleman's address pragmatic and realistic.

"You have to recognize that services have to be provided," he said.

Councilwoman Charleta B. Tavares said Coleman "was starting to go down that road" by explaining the choice residents face between paying more or getting less.

A fall campaign for an income-tax increase would coincide with elections for three City Council seats. Republican challenger Roseann Hicks, who attended the State of the City address last night, said she's against raising taxes.

"We're happy to sacrifice to help our community," she said. "As far as sacrificing any more of our paychecks, I think it's a mistake."

Coleman's address wasn't without flashes of optimism. He declared the state of the city strong, "not because I am expected to, but because our strength is reflected in our greatest asset: our people."

He also touted several new initiatives, though they were on a far-less-grandiose scale than his 2006 pitch for streetcars or his 2007 call for what originally was planned as $2billion in improvements timed for the city's upcoming bicentennial. Among the new initiatives:

He announced $6 million more in federal economic-stimulus money that the Central Ohio Workforce Investment Corp. will use to provide summer jobs to 2,500 young people and training for adults who are unemployed.

He said the city will work with the Community Shelter Board and National Church Residences, which operates the Commons at Grant, to build more housing Downtown for homeless and low-income residents. A similar project, the Commons at Buckingham, near Cleveland Avenue and I-670, was announced in 2007.

He announced a Columbus Foundation grant that will allow Camp Fire USA, a nationwide youth-development group, to reopen Tuttle Recreation Center on the Northwest Side. He said afterward that the city is working with other groups interested in running other shuttered centers.

rvitale@dispatch.com