With last week's Chattanooga runoff balloting complete, elections are behind us for a while.
Now comes the hard part - growing four new council members and five seasoned ones toward thoughtful governing.
We have faith that Chattanoogans have chosen well - even with only 8 percent of eligible voters making the final choices in Tuesday's runoff election that turned out two more incumbents.
On Monday, Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke will take the oath of office for a second term, and our four new council members - Darrin Ledford, Erskine Oglesby, Anthony Byrd and Demetrus Coonrod - will be sworn in along with incumbents Chip Henderson, Jerry Mitchell, Ken Smith, Russell Gilbert and Carol Berz.
It will be the most diverse council the city has had in a while. And it will skew much younger than it has in some time.
What remains to be seen is how and if the council will gel, and how its members will get along among themselves and with Berke, whose inaugural message Monday will be about "building Chattanooga together" - a goal that likely has never been more important than it is in today's fragmented political times.
By all estimates, Chattanooga overall is booming. Unlike many American cities, we've climbed out of the recession with more jobs and an enlarging population. Those pluses are fueling phenomenal building growth - the likes of which our city has never seen before, according to Berke: Right now, 2,600 new apartments are slated to go up in the core of Chattanooga, and with that growth the city will change a lot over the next few years. We need to be alert and prepared to keep the high quality of life we have.
But we also have another Chattanooga - a poorer one that has been left behind. So we also must work at improving the quality of life for that Chattanooga. We must work at improving fairness in our city with more affordable housing, improved workforce development and better access to quality education - primarily early childhood education.
We already can see what not addressing these issues in past years has brought us: far too many children in poverty who cannot read at their grade level, and far too many teens and young adults who, instead of graduating from high school with job-readiness, have dropped out to gang university on the streets - guns in hand.
This brings us back to Berke's message of "building Chattanooga together." He believes we have a special moment in good economic times right now to take advantage of both our economic boom and our financial boon. But he insists the city also must invest in its people - not just in great trendy new buildings. And he hopes the new council will help him create more urgency around both.
He believes community wide talk about things like workplace development and the city's Baby University, an expanded Head Start, and new pre-K initiatives must be morphed into larger conversations about real systemic change, complete with building blocks set to accommodate expansion. That kind of people investment goes right to the heart of fairness - something he says is very important to him, and to city residents whose doors he knocked on for re-election: They want a fairer economy and a fairer place to live.
"I think this council, by the way, is set up to work on that issue. I think the council people heard that too, and that puts them in a position to talk about that and to do something about it," the mayor said.
This brings us to governing, which of course depends wholly on building alliances and teams that share a vision.
The mayor says he already knows Oglesby, Coonrod and Byrd to varying degrees.
"Erskine is my appointment to the Chattanooga City Pension Board. Demetrus has been the president of her neighborhood association and vice chair of the Democratic Party. I've known Anthony for 15-plus years because he worked in Sessions Court when I was a lawyer. These are energetic, talented, thoughtful people who are going to be great additions to the city council. I don't know Darrin as well, but I look forward to getting to know him. The little bit of conversation we've had has been about how we make sure we build a great city and also do well for his district," Berke said.
The big questions are how this new Chattanooga team will evolve and whether its members - including the mayor - can rise above the pettiness of most local, state and national political panels.
Certainly there will be growing pains. But we challenge these old and new city leaders to truly grow, not just growl, with those pains.
People who live and work and learn and play in Chattanooga do so because we love this town. We see its promise. We know its warts. We wince over its wounds, and we cheer its strengths.
We have entrusted its guidance for the next four years to a mayor and nine council members.
Here is our charge to those leaders: Go forth and make us all proud to be Chattanoogans.