Two years ago, Business Insider ran a contest called Create Twitter’s Revenue Model, in which readers suggested ways the company with the curious “revenue-lite” business could turn into a moneymaker. Today, Twitter might still lack an obvious path to long-term profitability, but the company might be causing job growth in San Francisco simply with its move to the long-neglected (and maligned) mid-Market area.

Mayor Ed Lee sees the social networking company as an anchor for a revived mid-Market, a place long associated with crime, boarded up storefronts, and homelessness. He says Twitter expects to expand from 400 employees to 3,000 in the next few years, and he wants the City to be part of that. A six-year break on payroll taxes is a big element of the City’s attempts to induce other companies to follow Twitter.

“I know mid-Market and other things are going to happen, but they need constant attention,” Lee told The Commonwealth Club in May. “The person who cannot pay attention to it is someone who is running for office.”

That, in a nutshell, is the pitch Lee is making for his one-year mayoralty. As someone who is expected not to seek a full term in that office, he was an acceptable compromise for the former mayor and the Board of Supervisors. But he also intends to make his very status as a short-timer work for him.

Americans like the idea of people who are above politics. On the national level, Barack Obama played that tune during his presidential campaign. Less explicitly, Jerry Brown’s return to the governor’s office was helped by highlighting his age; he was too old to be the governor he was 30 years ago, the narrative went, and this time he’d do whatever he thought was right, and to heck with the political consequences.

Can Lee be successful on the local level with this approach? In a time when many companies are wary of hiring full-time permanent employees, it seems appropriate that San Francisco has hired a temp to staff the mayor’s desk. But Lee has more going for him than just his ephemeral office title; as he noted in May, his long experience in city administrative positions means he knows the behind-the-scenes budget reality. He knows which city departments have traditionally gotten off without making big cuts, while others have taken hit after hit.

This is where some might fear that his mid-Market dreams collide with his budget-fixing plans. Cleaning up a high-crime area to make it safe for more businesses, tourists and pedestrians requires a police presence. Lee said he spoke with Twitter employees about what they wanted in a new location, and they cited culture, bike access and safety. Similarly, tourists and others looking to take in a show at a mid-Market theater are probably seriously interested in not being stabbed or mugged.

For that, police presence is very helpful. If Lee is successful in his budgetary and redevelopment plans, then there will be an increased police presence in the mid-Market area and police personnel costs will be constrained. Can he get both?

He’s off to a good start. Lee says the police leadership has already committed to staffing a new police substation on Sixth Street late this year or early 2012. But as he tries to cut the City’s $306 million deficit, Lee has asked department heads for 10 percent cuts, with an additional 10 percent in contingencies. The City is “scraping to the bone,” said Lee. “There are departments who have historically been left alone. No one’s being left alone this year.” Police, for example. Lee, who is taking a $10,000 pay reduction of his own, says that police officers will take cuts, too.

He clearly hopes to make the reductions in salaries and benefits without sparking a Wisconsin-style labor uprising, in which the governor’s attempts to reduce the power of public unions led to the biggest public protests since the Vietnam War and a wave of recall elections that are rolling through that state.

By contrast, Lee points out, “I truly appreciate all the labor unions’ efforts,” and he stresses the need for the City to hire people who can live in the relatively expensive San Francisco market.

But he plans to reduce police salaries, not head count. “We want to have … the same number of officers,” he said.

Budget repairs can get a big boost from an improving economy as tax receipts flow into government coffers. That effect is already being felt at the state level, with Sacramento enjoying an unexpected $2.5 billion boost in tax revenues. As lawmakers in Sacramento adjust their expectations of next year’s tax revenues even higher, the political dynamics are changing in the effort to shake up California’s broken budgeting system. In other words, it’s resembling politics as usual, regardless of the governor’s AARP membership.

As Mayor Lee spends his handful of months in office pushing his priorities, he gets to be undistracted with the silliness and vitriol of political campaigns. “I get to do it in the most nonpolitical way,” he said. “If there’s anything I can say is fun [about the mayor’s job], it is fun to talk to people without having to create new promises.”

And not having to face the police union at the next election.

John Zipperer is vice president of editorial and media at The Commonwealth Club of California, www.commonwealthclub.org. E-mail: johnz@northsidesf.com