Personally I like the mayor. I should disclose that I have a contract with Downtown Vision (I am the project manager for the art walk). DVI is NOT part of any city agency or function and stands alone as a BID, but we obviously work closely with the city on many projects, etc. Still, I should disclose these things I suppose. I do not speak for DVI on this or any other public forum.
I think the mayor's business sense (which I believe is his best asset) keeps him from making quick (and sometimes obvious) decisions. But some of the decisions he has made have been thoughtful and clearly new-urban. The defeat of the pedestrian bridge at the library comes to mind as does the dedication to 10k units of housing downtown. His stance on incentives, in my opinion, is fair. We have gotten worked on quite a few deals. I was at a function where he was asked about the landing (which I think should be helped to a degree by the city). He said basically that they bought the property for $5M and wanted $50M of your money to develop it, and I don't think the kind of deal we want to do. I think this is a succinct answer and I think it sends the right message. Keep coming back with proposals until one works. We lost a whole neighborhood (La Villa) by making the first deal that came to the table.
Any way, hes got a bear of a problem with the courthouse, that if he can bury that, hopefully we'll get cranking on some real city changers...like enforcement of the property maint. code.