The campaign's over.

The crusade continues.

Last month, former Lancaster Mayor Charlie Smithgall lost his bid to unseat incumbent Mayor Rick Gray. But unlike other unsuccessful candidates, Smithgall hasn't spent the weeks since then reflecting on his loss.

Just the opposite: In a vitriolic letter to the editor printed in last weekend's Sunday News, Smithgall called on Gray to resign.

And at a city budget hearing Dec. 5, Smithgall, a Republican, showed up to lambaste Democrat Gray and his proposed 2010 budget, which includes a 2.4-mill tax increase, a water-rate hike and a reduction in the number of city workers.

"It's not sour grapes," Smithgall said of his criticism, a continuation of the charges he leveled during the campaign. Sure, he said, he's no longer a candidate — but he's still a city resident and he still hears from neighbors and others worried about Lancaster's future.

"They're raising taxes 25 percent; they're raising water rates; PPL is going to raise [electric] rates 30 percent; and it's going to force people out of their homes," Smithgall said.

Gray agreed that it's a tough budget, but, "People who are objective and mature step back and take a look at where our finances are, and they see we're in the same boat" as other municipalities, he said, citing East Lampeter Township, considering a 25 percent tax increase and police layoffs, and Elizabethtown Borough, where taxes could rise 20 percent.

"The people who came to our budget presentation [Dec. 5] came upset and left understanding," Gray said.

Except one.

In his letter to the editor published the next day, Smithgall accused Gray of "blaming everyone else for the city's financial problems," and wrote that Gray "needs to at least hire administrators that are competent, or ask for their resignations because neither the mayor or anyone on his overpaid staff are doing their jobs." He also called Gray's staff "inept and deceitful."

"The bottom line is Rick Gray needs to resign," Smithgall wrote. "He clearly is not fit to run this city and will never be held accountable by his rubber-stamp council."

Said Smithgall in an interview last week, "I'm sure it stirred a whole lot of people up."

It sure did.

"Oh my God, can you believe that letter?" said one local official, speaking off the record. "But the chatter I'm hearing is that people think it reflected more poorly on Smithgall" than on Gray.

A similar opinion was expressed in the LancasterOnline forum TalkBack: "Personally, the tone and timbre of that letter has no place coming from a former mayor or potential candidate," wrote one poster. "It is frankly inappropriate."

Gray declined to respond to Smithgall's call for him to step down, other than to cite a legal term, res ipsa loquitur — "the thing speaks for itself."

On Smithgall's denigration of his aides, Gray said: "I think it's unfortunate he has to take cheap shots at dedicated public servants — and I'm not including myself — who either have taken a reduction in salary or could easily make more money than they do here, but [remain with the city] because of their sense of public service."

Political differences aside, there appears to be no love lost between Gray and Smithgall.

"Mr. Gray doesn't like me," Smithgall said. "I think I'll stay home and cry the rest of my life."

But he said he's persisted in his criticism not because of a personal vendetta, but because he's unsatisfied with the explanations offered by the administration for the budget crisis.

In particular, Smithgall said he's upset the city borrowed money to spend on streetscape-improvement projects at a time when the police and fire departments are cutting jobs.

"They went out and borrowed millions and went on a spending spree," Smithgall said. "That costs more than $2 million in debt service [in 2010] that would be more than what they need to cover police, fire and everything else.

"I guess we should be glad we got planters downtown," said Smithgall. "If crime gets out of control and they start shooting, we can hide behind the planters."

Patrick Hopkins, the city's administrative services director, called Smithgall's allegations "wildly inaccurate."

The city did do a $125 million bond issue in 2007, Hopkins said, but the vast majority of that money was borrowed to build two new water treatment plants and other upgrades to the city's water system. Other funds were used to purchase fleet vehicles and improve the sewer system. About $18 million was used for capital improvements, such as the streetscape work, Hopkins said. But the city is still paying roughly the same amount of debt service, or interest, in 2009 and 2010 that it did in 2005, about $2.8 million.

"Our goal was to keep the same level of debt service, and we have," Hopkins said.

"What we have had to pay extra for was a termination fee of $3.9 million" on an interest rate swap engineered by Smithgall in 2004, said Hopkins.

Lancaster City Council is expected to approve Gray's 2010 budget at its meeting Tuesday night.