A FEW weeks ago, I wrote: “Mark Green is the worst possible mayor for New York City – except for Freddie Ferrer.” Those unkind words reflected a profound distrust of Green based on close scrutiny of his years of public service and his writings.

I would not have written them had the Democratic candidate for mayor already given the superb speech on the recovery of New York City he delivered yesterday.

The speech, “The New York Comeback,” indicates that Green and his team have thought far more deeply, systematically and creatively about what needs to be done in the wake of Sept. 11 than his putatively Republican rival. Michael Bloomberg’s “blueprint” on the subject seems silly and slapdash by comparison.

Perhaps it is not too much to hope that Mark Green really has matured and grown in the weeks since Sept. 11.

Green himself suggested as much yesterday. He began by noting bluntly that, when he appeared with his rival Democratic mayoral candidates back on May 15, “we discussed a softening economy, outyear budget gaps and reform of our public schools. How long ago and far away those times seem now. Five months later, we are living in very different times for our city, our economy, indeed, our entire way of life.

“Five months ago, we could not possibly have imagined the economic problems we face as a city today.”

Now “my chief role and responsibility as mayor will be to lead the comeback of New York,” he said. To that end, he set out a sensible plan focusing on lower Manhattan that would go a long way toward stabilizing the residential, commercial and retail crises there.

The key, for the born-again Green: tax credits. “I will fight for a substantial per-employee tax credit that should be available to every business that signs a new lease in Lower Manhattan in the wake of this crisis,” he said.

More creatively, he suggested that “the governor and our congressional delegation should consider a similar retention tax credit for residents who sign new leases, too.”

The repopulation of lower Manhattan – one of the most heartening developments of the past 10 years and a reversal of a trend dating back more than a century – is now at risk.

Those who live there deserve an incentive to stay because they have been through an unprecedented trauma caused by foreign attack. And, given that the nation wants and needs lower Manhattan to survive and thrive in the aftermath of Sept. 11, such a tax credit would be akin to rebuilding a badly damaged neighborhood.

Green’s transportation proposals are sensible too. They involve greater use of express buses and more frequent subway cars in the time just before rush hour, plus enhancement of ferry experiments now underway. He even indicates that he no longer expects a Second Avenue Subway, though he says we should all fight for it.

By contrast, Bloomberg’s rebuilding plan is distressingly thin and somewhat unworldly. He opposes a new agency to oversee reconstruction, which is a little like opposing the rising of the sun in the morning.

With tens of billions of dollars flowing from Washington into New York state, that money will have to be channeled into a central authority simply for there to be even minimal accountability. And the only way the city will get its full say is by accommodating Albany – because when it comes to spending money here, the state capital need hardly bother with city officials.

Green understood this in a way Bloomberg clearly does not. Rather than approach these critical problems in a holistic way, he throws in weird alternate ideas – like putting a high-school complex on Governors Island so that existing schools can be used as elementary and intermediate schools.

That’s a wacko thing to bring up at this moment of all moments. And wacko isn’t what we need, not by a long shot.

E-mail: podhoretz@nypost.com