Hey, amigo, get in front!

As time goes about healing wounds, the City Council’s so-called Three Amigos brandish pleasant public faces. This is a product of necessity: Majorities require their constituent parts to remain whole. But whatever the fellas might say when notebooks are open and tapes are rolling, this is plainly not the same trio who assumed power, and apparently other things, a year ago this morning.

A sting still abides in the political sensibilities of Vice Mayor Frank Lucente and Councilman Bruce Allen over Mayor Tim Williams’ siding with the minority in declining to drop the tax rate to offset a reassessment increase. The boys ran as a philosophical item – though Williams was unopposed – pounding home a platform that depicted the council’s current minority as tax-and-spenders of distinctly liberal bent.

To Lucente and Allen, their victories last year translated to a mandate from constituents to lower the rate. Williams betrayed this. He was persuaded by cries from agencies facing cuts, a sweeping spending reduction already placed on the table by city staff and the capacity of Councilwoman Lorie Smith to spin a comparison that minimized impact and set stomachs to growling. The average tax increase for the owner of a median-priced home, she explained, would equate to springing each month for a Big Mac Extra Value Meal. Mmm. Raise the taxes and pass the fries.

So the three, whom conventional wisdom expected to vote as one, divided. This provides intrigue, with an election looming next year in the wards of Smith and Councilwoman Nancy Dowdy. Snaring one of those seats could provide for conservatives security against Williams’ wandering.

But what in the meantime can the people of this city expect from the majority, or what passes for it?

On the fiscal conservatism they espoused, Lucente and Allen have hewed to the hard lines they drew in the campaign. If election results are to be taken to mean that voters wanted officials who would fight spending dragons, Lucente and Allen fit the bill.

Not so Williams. On the question of the tax rate, the mayor felt himself in a hard place because a reduction would have required slashing an additional $550,000 from the budget. But Williams put himself in a still tighter spot when he suggested council raises. On that, he was a faction of one. Who is this man, the mayor?

An independent spirit is not a thing to be disparaged. But where we would most like to see it from Williams, we find only a yawning void. How about taking up the cause of downtown revitalization? This is largely a niggling concern to Lucente, who views economic development as beyond the council’s pale. As mayor, Williams is uniquely positioned to be the one shouting from rooftops in attempts to lure development to the city core. So why not take up the good fight?

His faction, if it remains his, as well as the city have been affected by circumstances beyond their control. The nationwide housing collapse precipitated layoffs at Invista, resulting in lost machine tax revenues. The Waynesboro Place and South River Complex projects announced earlier this year rekindled hope even as unemployment spiked. All of this happened as the council mostly watched.

That approach will not allow the city to gain the full benefits each of those projects might bring, especially in the case of the proposed Mill on the South River. Some spinoff development might occur downtown, but to drive growth into the core, the city will need to do more, starting with a concerted push to attract new business to that area. Williams would regain some lost political capital and serve his city well by cultivating this effort and leading it.

Some of this city’s political movers would have us believe that this necessitates shelling out nickels and dimes to the agencies that absorbed cuts or faced them. Our interest is in seeing the city take a bottom-line approach to spending, showing a payoff from what some prefer to call investments, and assuming an active role in reeling in new sources of revenue and jobs. Having labored to keep spending in check, the majority earns from us a passing grade. But to score high marks, one among the amigos will need to step to the fore on the subject of downtown. Mayor Williams, why not you?