It is always refreshing to see a candidate, once elected, actually act on the positions he or she took during the campaign. In breathing new life into the New London development agency and boosting the prospects of finally achieving development in the Fort Trumbull area, Mayor Michael Passero has done exactly that.

Passero made it clear throughout his campaign for mayor in 2015 that if elected his administration would not only work cooperatively and in support of the Renaissance City Development Association, but seek to expand its role. This put him in stark contrast with the man he sought to unseat in the Democratic primary, former Mayor Daryl Justin Finizio, who wanted to strip the RCDA agency of its power and place all development authority within City Hall.

The voters elected Passero, who is now acting on his vision.

On Tuesday the City Council authorized the mayor to sign an agreement with RCDA that expands its role in promoting development in the city, widening the scope beyond what has long been its exclusive focus on the Fort Trumbull area.

Critically, Passero’s plans provide the RCDA some means to achieve its desired ends. The council authorized a $100,000 appropriation for the development agency and the administration will seek to direct $30,000 in federal Community Development Block Grant funding to the RCDA.

With the hiring of a full-time executive director and the additional financial resources provided to the development agency, there will be no excuses for the RCDA or the Passero administration if they are unable to promote progress at Fort Trumbull. This is exactly how things should work under a strong mayoral form of government. The mayor sets an agenda, provides the resources to achieve the desired results, and is fully accountable to voters for success or failure.

Other areas of interest for the RCDA will be development around State Pier, working with the city’s Office of Development and Planning on a harbor management plan, and updating the city’s plan of conservation and development.

The other big news was the hiring of Peter Davis as RCDA’s executive director. It has been a decade since the agency had a full-time paid director. Davis, 59, is well qualified for the position. For the last 20 years he has served as planning director in Norwich. He will soon retire from that position. He is also a Waterford selectman, winning that post after his unsuccessful run for first-selectman in 2015 on the Democratic ticket.

Davis’ experience in urban development, his work with developers, his knowledge of municipal government and his understanding of the state bureaucracy should serve the RCDA and New London well. Being the guy who finally found a way to move development forward at Fort Trumbull would be quite the career capstone for a professional planner.

The critics will point to Norwich’s own development struggles, particularly in its downtown. But the challenges facing that small city’s downtown, like many such downtowns throughout post-industrial New England, are particularly intractable. Davis did steer the city through a rapid period of development in other sections of the city during the growth of the tribal casinos. And working with Norwich’s development agency, he helped assure the city’s business park remained a critical cornerstone of that city’s tax base.

Others will lament propping up the RCDA because they are still angry with its predecessor, the New London Development Corporation, which led the ugly eminent domain fight that ended with a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision and the razing of homes at Fort Trumbull. The 2005 decision in Kelo vs. City of New London, upholding the use of eminent domain, remains among the most criticized in the court’s history.

However, Passero is wise enough to recognize he has one four-year term to show success and the time will pass quickly. He will not let past controversies cloud the fact that a redevelopment agency, with the right resources and focus, holds the best hope of seeing progress at Fort Trumbull and providing a badly needed boost to New London’s tax base.