One of the strangest city elections in many a year is now history.

While last year's local and national elections focused on sweeping calls for "change," the changes brought on by yesterday's Gloucester voting are more like tweaks in the city's government, not profound sweeping reforms. And that was especially the case for Mayor Carolyn Kirk, who received the first unopposed free ride into a new term since Bruce Tobey collected the same pass in his mayoral re-election bid in 1997.

The fact that Kirk didn't have any opposition yesterday can be construed as the strongest of mandates for her to continue down the paths she has taken over her first two years — and in many cases, she's steered the city on a good course.

She's made some hard but rightful decisions to rein in city spending — trimming more than two dozen job cuts through a series of early retirements and the resulting attrition last spring.

She stood steadfastly by a needed push for development, notably through her work to firm up the tax incentive financing — or TIF — agreement that proved to be an important final piece toward bringing the Gloucester Crossing project to fruition.

And she's taken some important — though relatively small — positive steps regarding union contracts, getting at least a numbers reduction in the firefighters' manning requirements, and holding the police officers' new union contract to "zero" wage increases — even if raises will be coming through previous outside stipends being slipped into the officers' base pay.

But Kirk's first two years have not been without a few bumps, and it's important for the mayor and her City Hall cabinet, so to speak, not to view her free ride — brought about when September Primary survivor and outgoing Councilor-at-large Sharon George abruptly pulled out of the race a week after dispatching perpetual candidate Daniel Ruberti — as an endorsement to rule as a virtual monarch.

That's especially true when it comes to crisis management, the source of most of Kirk's first-term missteps. Those have included her handling of the 2008 Gloucester High pregnancy crisis, when she declared to the global media that she and other officials had found "no evidence of a pact" among teens to get pregnant, although they reached that conclusion without talking to any of the girls involved, and dismissed the comments of the only administrator who had — then-principal Joseph Sullivan, who quit soon after, claiming the mayor's comments had so undermined his credibility that he could no longer lead the school.

Then there was this year's August-September water crisis, when she and Health Director Jack Vondras insisted the city's water was safe for drinking — even after statistics showed it had failed state tests for at least four days.

To be fair, Kirk's crisis-management stumbles seemed born of a desire to keep a lid on these issues — to simply make them go away, as if somehow residents couldn't handle the harsh realities. And they may have been well-intended.

But they follow a pattern of dismissal toward some residents or community leaders — a pattern that's included pushing for a Fort zoning change without first reaching out to neighborhood residents and businesses; one that resurfaced when she shunned the City Council rather than providing those fellow elected officials with direct answers regarding the water crisis in September. And it's one that could prove dangerous if she faces a new crisis in the weeks ahead over the firing of ex-firefighter Clinton Carroll.

Kirk's second term should advance many reforms she has courageously set in motion. And she is indeed on the right track. But along that route to reform, she should not forget that city councilors should be seen as government partners, that the bridge-building discussed throughout yesterday's council-at-large race should not mean building a one-way effort — that she should indeed show the same respect for and confidence in city residents that they have shown to her over the last two years.

With Kirk's leadership, Gloucester is indeed on a positive course. But remember, the best government leadership is a team effort — and an engineer rolling solo can all too easily fly off the tracks.

We wish her the very best in the two challenging years that lie ahead.