New London soon will be entering its third mayoral election since a charter change restored a directly elected mayor as the city’s chief executive after a nearly centurylong hiatus.

The Day, on its editorial pages, was a major proponent of the change. The city manager system wasn’t working. We felt a mayor could lead in a way a council or city manager could not, both in moving New London forward and in dealing with state government.

The transition to mayor-led government has hardly been flawless. I’m not going to make the case that New London has seen a dramatic turnaround. It hasn’t.

But I will argue that some things are moving in the right direction and having mayors has had much to do with it.

In 2011, Daryl Justin Finizio became the first mayor elected under the charter change. Being first was tough. The council and public were not used to the idea of having a mayor in charge. The fact that Finizio had moved into town less than two years before running and had few friends within the political establishment, but a number of enemies, made the challenge more difficult.

Finizio’s unwillingness to recognize the limits posed by his own inexperience, his sometimes haughty and impulsive nature, and the failure to bring into his inner circle people who would challenge him before he acted, all made for a chaotic administration. In his third year Finizio dramatically said he would not run for re-election, then just as dramatically and predictably later changed his mind, only to lose to current Mayor Michael Passero in the 2015 Democratic primary.

One thing that Finizio did get right was confronting the city’s dire fiscal standing. Yes, he made some decisions that aggravated the problem, but he made more decisions that began to correct it by pushing unpopular government cuts and higher taxes. Asking for service cuts went against Finizio’s progressive nature but, to his credit, he did it.

In the dying days of the city manager system the fund balance had been depleted to near nothing, leaving New London without a fiscal parachute. It was bad. By fiscal year 2015, straddling the Finizio and Passero administrations, it had recovered to $4.2 million. It has now moved past $11 million. Passero proposes using a portion, $1.8 million, to create a capital reserve account, providing a means to buy equipment without borrowing.

Over the past five years revenues have increased on average by nearly 3 percent annually, from $80 million in fiscal year 2013 to a projected $92.8 million in 2018. The city’s annual grand list growth of 3.8 percent during that time has outpaced neighbors Groton and Waterford.

With one exception, a big one, Passero has held the line on taxes, with no increase his first year in office and just a half-mill increase for the current fiscal year. Due to revaluation, his proposed budget shows the tax rate dropping from 43.8 mills to 39.99 for the fiscal year beginning July 1. Based on higher assessments, however, some property owners would see higher taxes, particularly multifamily and commercial properties, while others would welcome lower tax bills.

With regards to tax increases, that big exception came in Passero's second year, when the council approved a 2.71-mill tax hike, caused by a combination of increased spending and cuts in state aid. Politically speaking, it was mayoral to get that out of the way early in the term.

By any measure, the city is in far better fiscal health since reintroduction of the mayoral system.

The change in governance can be seen elsewhere, as well. The mayor worked with the New London Housing Authority and federal officials to get the low-income Thames River Apartments, with their deplorable living conditions, closed and the tenants into apartments of their choice using Section 8 vouchers.

And when the Connecticut Port Authority announced a new contract for management of State Pier but with none of the revenues flowing to the host community of New London, Mayor Passero took his complaint straight to Gov. Ned Lamont in a way I don’t believe a city manager or council ever could have. As a result, the deal was reworked, with the city receiving a minimum of $125,000 annually with potential to grow. More importantly, his honor put down a marker that the city expects to be cut in on the action when further port development generates revenues. If Passero can help land a major staging error for offshore wind development at the pier, it may prove to be his biggest achievement.

Establishing a Stormwater Utility, the first city in the state to do so, has allowed the city to tap some of its biggest tax-exempt institutions — the untouchables — for revenues that can be used to maintain storm drains and sweep city streets. These fees are expected to generate $80,000 from Connecticut College, $13,000 from the U.S. Coast Guard Academy and $6,500 from Lawrence + Memorial Hospital.

Are there reasons to complain? Absolutely. The pace of downtown revitalization is discouraging and at times seems to move backward. The Fort Trumbull area remains largely vacant.

But I remain confident time will prove the switch to mayoral governance was the right one. In a few months voters will provide their verdict, deciding whether Passero has done enough to be the first mayor since the change to deserve a second four-year term.

Paul Choiniere is the editorial page editor.