DATELINE: BOSTON : Flynn Takes a Fall From Political Peak to Valley : The city’s police, school and money problems are changing the landscape of the once-popular mayor’s career.

For a while there, it seemed Boston Mayor Raymond L. Flynn could do no wrong.

He was, after all, riding the crest of being swept back into office last November for a third term by a huge margin--more than 70% of the votes cast.

Since then, however, things have not been going terribly well for Flynn. He’s having problems with the police, problems with schools and money woes that are so much a part of the landscape these days in the depressed Northeast.

Gone are those heady times when Boston was booming and the only question was how to go about spending all the money in the city’s coffers. It is almost an instant replay of what happened to the oil patch cities during the bust years of the ‘80s.

“The third term, unfortunately for the city, has not started off well,” said freshman Councilman John Nucci, who appears to be setting himself up as a Flynn antagonist for this latest term of office.

While the city’s money woes have come upon Boston gradually over the last several years, Flynn’s problems with the school system came in a rush.

Like many other urban school systems, Boston’s has deteriorated to a point where it is considered a blight on the community. The dropout rate is 33%, and just 11% of the city’s high school graduates will go on to earn a college degree. A recent study cited the school system’s bloated bureaucracy and financial mismanagement as serious problems.

Much of the blame was centered on the city’s elected school committee, or school board, which was considered unwieldy and unable to trim the $16 million needed to bring the budget into balance. With Flynn leading the charge, the mayor now has the power to appoint school committee members.

But when Flynn made his appointments in December, he chose longtime loyalists, causing critics to charge that the committee had become a political dumping ground. The fact that Flynn announced the appointments via fax machine on a Saturday night did little to dispel that notion.

On top of that, the mayor appointed one of his closest aides as executive secretary of the committee, leading to speculation that Flynn--who did not return phone calls--was seeking to undercut the present school supervisor, Lois Harrison-Jones. Flynn then raised the ire of teachers by holding up their paychecks for no apparent reason.

“There is a concern among educators and community groups that this committee will play the role of rubber stamp for the mayor,” said Edward Doherty, president of the Boston Teachers Union.

Nucci was more succinct about Flynn’s new role: “He’s taken over the schools.”

Further complicating Flynn’s latest term have been his problems with the police, specifically Commissioner Francis M. Roache, a lifelong friend of the mayor.

After the police bungled the Stuart murder investigation, the mayor ordered a special panel to investigate the department. Then Flynn held the report for three months before finally releasing it in mid-January.

(The Stuart case garnered worldwide attention. It involved Charles Stuart, who apparently murdered his wife but told police the couple had been attacked by a black gunman. As police investigated the case, which caused a racial uproar, Stuart apparently jumped to his death from a bridge here.)

When the Stuart report was finally made public, it recommended that confidence in the department could only be restored if Roache was replaced. It also criticized the internal affairs division for not doing a good job probing citizens’ complaints.

Roache, in response, said he plans to remain at the head of the department. Both he and the mayor have recommended a new position on the police force to manage the department’s daily affairs. But the panel’s head, James St. Clair, said that is not good enough, that Roache has to go.

Meanwhile, Boston’s money woes continue to grow.

Neil Sullivan, the mayor’s chief policy adviser, told the Boston Globe recently that the city’s fiscal situation had changed dramatically since Flynn took office in 1984. Then the question was how Boston’s neighborhoods could share in the downtown’s booming expansion. Now the question is whether basic services can be delivered in the wake of rapidly declining revenues.

Profile: Raymond L. Flynn

Born: July 22, 1939

Hometown: Boston

Education: BA, Providence College, M. Ed. Harvard University.

Career highlights: Massachusetts state representative, 1971 to 1978; Boston city councilman, 1978 to 1983; mayor of Boston since 1983; reelected to third term in 1991; chairman of U.S. Conference of Mayors Task Force on Poverty, Hunger and Homelessness.