Perhaps the Boston City Council is made of sterner stuff than people think.

Its budget deliberations this year were a remarkable departure from years past: the council actually accomplished something.

In April of each year, the mayor submits to the council his proposed budget for the upcoming fiscal year. It's not a trifling amount; this year's budget was a hefty $1.7 billion, a 5 percent increase over last year's.

The budget is then handed over to two council committees: Education and Ways and Means. The Education Committee gets the school budget - this year amounting to $593 million. Ways and Means takes everything else.

In theory, the council's review of the budget amounts to its greatest source of power. The city can't spend any money unless the council passes the budget before July 1, the beginning of the fiscal year.

In fact, however, the council has routinely squandered that power. Both committees hold an enormous number of hearings - Ways and Means typically has upwards of 60 - but the questions are rote and the answers almost irrelevant. In years past the budget approved by the council has differed little from the version originally submitted by the mayor.

The reason for that is that the administration is better organized than the often-fractious council. Administration officials will walk around to councilors' offices, asking what they need to win their vote for the budget. It usually turns out that the price for a vote is pathetically cheap and small-minded: a few summer jobs, a couple of new police cadets, a pothole filled here and there.

Councilors, preoccupied with their districts, are easy pickings. Usually the administration is able to secure their votes well before either of the budget committees has even finished holding hearings.

Much of the fault for that lies with the council's leadership. Legislative bodies are only effective when they are well led. But seven-term council President James Kelly has never showed any interest in organizing the body or of helping it to develop a coherent voice. Indeed, if Kelly has had an agenda, it has amounted to little more than the personal acquisition of power and the defense of some of his South Boston constituents.

This year was different, in large part because Kelly, distracted by battles over South Boston development issues like the convention center and the waterfront, has left such a power vacuum that other councilors were able to seize some initiative. Most notably, Councilors Maura Hennigan and Stephen Murphy, chair and vice-chair of Ways and Means, decided to try something new.

Prior even to the mayor's submission of the budget, Hennigan and Murphy met with the other seven members of their committee to try to get some consensus on budget priorities. The group settled on a relatively modest list of goals, including an increase in funds for affordable housing, the creation of a special traffic division within the police department, and boosting the amounts set aside for collective bargaining.

They then tried to persuade fellow councilors to refuse to commit their votes to the administration. Instead, the committee held a series of five meetings with administration officials, where it pushed for the council's priorities.

Hennigan and Murphy were successful, and the budget passed by the council on Wednesday reflected that success. The administration  capitulated to the committee's demands on housing, traffic control  and collective bargaining. Moreover, budget hearings this year were ``much more aggressive,'' notes an approving Sam Tyler, executive director of the watchdog Boston Municipal Research Bureau. For the first time in a long time, department heads testifying at budget hearings were put on the spot, facing a committee that often refused to accept the first answer it was given.

It was a refreshing change.

For all that, though, this year's budget should be regarded as an improvement, not a success. The achievements were small. The council made little effort to cut departments. Kelly was upset by Hennigan and Murphy's tactics - which he correctly interpreted as a slap in the face of his leadership - and several other Kelly loyalists on the council tried to stymie the Ways and Means Committee efforts.

Still, this year's process suggests just how powerful the council could become. Councilors for years have tried to excuse their ineffectualness on the budget by pointing to the body's limited  powers. Unlike the state Legislature, the council technically can only cut the budget; it can't force an increase.

That may be a distinction without a difference. In the back and forth of budget negotiations, the council's power to cut can be used as a  tool to force increases.

The real challenge for the council is leadership. In truth the mayor has been quite happy with Kelly as president; from a mayoral point-of-view, a weak council is a good council.

A strong council - one capable of laying out its own priorities and more the co-equal of the mayor - would certainly be more troubling to the administration. That's the way it should be. At $62,500 a year each, councilors should be more than rubber stamps.

Tom Keane writes every Friday in the Boston Herald. He can be reached at tomkeane@tomkeane.com.