Mayor Steve Bach deserves a passing grade for his first year in office but can’t be given the highest marks across the board.

Let’s face it, his administration could hardly be called transformative yet and the mayor has picked a few unnecessary fights along the way. To be fair, any mayor in the first year of the new strong mayor system was going to be in uncharted waters and some of the growing pains were going to be felt no matter who held the office.

What has Bach done well?

Whether you agree with the direction or not, there is a sense of direction. Clearly the city was a rudderless ship before Bach took over.

A central part of the agenda is to support the downtown core, based on a sort of “trickle out” theory: A thriving downtown will be good for the rest of the city in time.

No one disagrees that downtown needs to be healthy, but it is a considerable leap of faith to believe the far-flung neighborhoods in Colorado’s Home of Sprawl are going to benefit from City Hall’s continual gushing over downtown. In the southeast quadrant of the city, they’re still awaiting the slightest trickle.

From promoting protest zones, panhandling bans and surveillance cameras to wondering about the removal of the Martin Drake power plant, the focus almost always seems to be on downtown.

For articulating a sense of direction Bach deserves an A grade. As for executing the plan, well, it would be unfair to assign a grade because it’s still too early.

Like former Gov. Richard Lamm, who was dubbed Governor Gloom, Bach repeatedly has warned the city is bound for a “day of reckoning” with its budget. Several looming factors lead to the conclusion that the city budget is not sustainable. You can’t solve the problem until you first define it.

Bach should get an A grade for this because as easy as it is for an official to say all is well, what the public really needs is the truth.

When he was campaigning for mayor, Bach chided opponent Richard Skorman for supporting a stormwater fee that was “imposed on us without our approval.”

Now as mayor, Bach is singing a different tune as he grapples with the very real need for the program and the threat posed to the Southern Delivery System project if the city does not do something about its stormwater.

Bach has even suggested paying for the program by adding charges to utility bills. In the interim he proposes a Band-Aid of a few million in the 2013 budget – which by simple math is an inadequate solution. On this issue Bach rates a C grade.

The strong mayor system takes supervision of Memorial Health System from the mayor, but a ballot measure will be needed to clear the way for Memorial’s merger with University of Colorado Hospital. The merger is a creative solution that has important implications for the city’s future economic development, but Bach’s support so far has been tepid.

The ballot measure needs his backing and leadership. So far, a C grade.

There has been much bickering between Bach and the City Council with blame on both sides. Part of this is linked to the council’s frustration with losing power because of the strong mayor system, part of it is because of Bach’s personal temperament – he has a controlling nature that does not lend itself well to compromise.

Bach couldn’t let it go when the council overrode a few of his budget vetoes, going to the extreme of ginning up a legal opinion from City Attorney Chris Melcher that council overrides could simply be ignored.

In a tight budget it seemed stupid to spend extra money on tennis court maintenance, but the council had the votes and Bach’s reaction was over the top. He pushed for the downtown surveillance cameras, a new program, and everyone knows there are other neighborhoods with more serious crime problems.

For his relations with the council members, who also were elected by the people, Bach gets a C-minus. For what it is worth, the council gets the same grade.

For his first year Bach rates a B grade. Some big problems could not have been fixed this soon, but Bach has his team selected now and his report card will depend on how he addresses these big problems.