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GREENSBORO — Tuesday’s City Council election injected new blood into city government, giving Greensboro four newcomers who will change the council’s math in more ways than one.

Three new council members will join Mayor-elect Bill Knight: Jim Kee in District 2 and at-large council members Danny Thompson and Nancy Vaughan.

The new group likely will skew more conservative, but some council members said the biggest change could be in the tone, efficiency and fundamental arithmetic of budgets and taxes.

“I think this group is going to work together well,” said Vaughan, who as the leading at-large vote getter, will be the next mayor pro tem.

Vaughan left the City Council in 2003 after two terms. She said she has watched the meetings since then and is looking forward to meetings being handled with more civility and discipline.

“In Winston-Salem, they just passed a formal code of behavior for their City Council,” Vaughan said. “I think we need to institute the same sort of code in Greensboro, and it should not be optional.”

Knight and Thompson both have stressed the need to conduct council meetings strictly according to formal rules of order. The more free-form style of the last council led to bickering and meetings that lasted until nearly midnight, Thompson said.

District 4 Councilwoman Mary Rakestraw, who gave up an at-large seat to run successfully for the district seat, said outgoing Mayor Yvonne Johnson was most concerned the past two years with everyone feeling that they’d had their say. Rakestraw said she admired that concern, but felt people often took advantage of it to drag out meetings and be unprofessional.

“It seemed like on the last council, sometimes we just couldn’t talk to each other without remarks just getting personal,” Rakestraw said. “That bothered me. I just think that we can make a fresh start now.”

At-large Councilman Robbie Perkins said he’d like to get back to having smaller meetings before each week’s council meeting to prepare and make sure everyone is informed. He said that practice was abandoned by the last council, with some members intentionally dragging things out to make Johnson and former City Manager Mitchell Johnson look like poor leaders.

As the new council moves forward. it will contend with a number of lingering issues, chief among them controversy within the police department and lawsuits from officers who allege racial bias.

Most of the new council members said they want to see the lawsuits run their course and the department to move forward without reopening and rearguing any specific cases.

“I think the City Council needs to begin new conversations with the city manager about how we’re going to choose a new police chief now that Tim Bellamy is due for retirement in about a year,” Thompson said.

Thompson said he didn’t want to get into whether any of the officers involved in lawsuits — or even former police Chief David Wray — should have their legal fees paid by the city.

Vaughan said she wouldn’t support settling any of the lawsuits, but said she thought the city should pay any legal fees incurred by the officers who were sued in their official capacity.

Kee said he didn’t see why that’s necessary.

“If you or I were sued, the city wouldn’t offer to pay our legal fees,” Kee said.

Getting past the animosity to a unified department is key, Kee said.

Some of the new council members — particularly Knight and Thompson — focused on math: cutting the city’s budget and avoiding tax increases. The new members said they’ll be looking for fat to trim.

“I’ve talked with a couple of county commissioners about how we can move forward with merging the planning departments of Greensboro city and Guilford County,” Thompson said. “There are cost savings there. We’re going to talk about beginning with a zero-based budget and go from there.”

As a small-business owner, Kee said he knows there are always places you can trim.

“We’re going to have to look at things line by line, to see what’s practical,” Kee said.

Perkins said he wants to see the new council meet — and be brought up to speed — before specific budget proposals begin flying around.

“When I first came onto City Council, I couldn’t believe how much I didn’t know,” Perkins said. “Whether it’s the police or the budget or some city department — it takes a while, maybe even two budgets, for you to learn what a different ball game it is. And the important thing is: You can’t learn it all in a day.”

Contact Joe Killian at 373-7023 or joe.killian@news-record.com