Last week at the San Diego Association of Governments, we saw compromise brokered by Mayor Kevin Faulconer of the City of San Diego and County Supervisor Jim Desmond, former mayor of San Marcos.

For me, that’s hard to believe. SANDAG board meetings in the three years that I have been at the helm of the San Diego County Taxpayers Association have normally been grandstanding by elected leaders. Accompanying these long soliloquies are equally lengthy lectures from specific interests or members of the public. I must admit: I’ve been one of those lecturers at times.

I’m doing a double take on last week’s discussion because the fight to win the argument has historically made decision making at this regional agency incredibly hard or near possible. The divide has been – for nearly forty years since TRANSNET passed in the early eighties – about splitting the taxpayer pie between freeways, transit, and local roads. And the arguments have been vicious and, at times, quite personal.

No one objects to the idea that we want to be able to move people and goods around faster. It’s the devil in the managerial details that get people riled up.

This is why I am pleased to see that compromise on some of the details won the day. I’m not saying I agree with them, but I do appreciate the leadership it took by the brokers to make it happen. That takes some guts, because this action won’t earn them more friends. They each had to go against the grain.

And that’s okay! Tony Blair, former Labour prime minister of Great Britain, said “to decide is to divide.” Peggy Noonan said after the death of Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, “the more decisive, the more divisive.”

Political figures create controversies. Great leaders lead us through them.

And we will soon have to pick our next leaders in this upcoming election cycle. Besides the incredibly crowded field of Democratic Presidential candidates vying to run against President Donald Trump, we also have some folks running for mayor of San Diego in 2020.

Today we judge big name players by how they do as mayors. Bill de Blasio, mayor of New York City and candidate for president, is getting blasted for how he handled power outages. There’s an effort afoot to recall Eric Garcetti, mayor of Los Angeles, for his mishandling of the homelessness crisis just one hundred miles north of us. We no longer live in the era of industrialized policy by the Federal government – one size just does not fit all!

At this moment in our country, being the mayor of a big city matters. It might even be more important than who we select as president. We should put into our mayor’s office a great leader who will create debate and get the community to resolution on the details that divide.

And this means the next mayor has to be good at least at these two things.

First, he or she needs to set the agenda with some big ideas – leave the easy stuff for the professionals who fill the ranks of the city staff. That vision should spark debate and inspire conversation, trigger discussion. The next mayor has to get people to think beyond the boundaries of their own white picket fence and about what we want to be as a community.

Second, he or she then has to get to managing what it takes to execute a community vision. The creation and molding in step one is hard enough; figuring out the nuts and bolts to make the ideas real is more difficult. Our future mayor must be a competent manager on the details, too!

Being simultaneously inspirational and good at the seemingly little stuff is no easy feat – and compromise is key. The next mayor will have to get different people with different interests excited. Just like what happened at SANDAG recently, he or she will have to manage various specific interests.

Great leaders who get us through controversies know that excitement around our future isn’t enough. Such energy is tempered with the give-and-take of good management to forge lasting solutions.

What Should We Want in a Mayor?