I listened a bit Saturday night to some of the comments from the Amarillo City Council election victors.

Mayor-elect Ginger Nelson and Councilman-elect Eddy Sauer both talked about being members of a “team.” Sauer called himself a “team player” and vowed to work with his colleagues on the City Council to advance the city’s future — I presume in a positive direction.

Here’s a thought for the new mayor: Assemble your new colleagues right away and start setting some parameters.

As I understand it, Texas open meetings rules don’t prohibit council members- and mayors-elect from meeting as a body. Heck, they aren’t in power yet, so they can all get together and talk about city issues to their heart’s content.

Nelson, Sauer and council colleagues Elaine Hays, Freda Powell and Howard Smith now have a chance to bury the discord that occasionally flared up during the past two years.

The leader of this task ought to be the new mayor.

I’ll stipulate that I get that all five council members represent the same citywide constituency. The mayor’s extra stroke comes in the way he or she uses the office as a bully pulpit, not that I expect Mayor Nelson to become a City Council bully.

All five council members need to face among themselves some of the questions that bubbled up from the community. I refer to the suggestion among some that a high-powered local political action group — Amarillo Matters — “bought and paid for” the council.

They all have spoken about pushing the city’s economic engine forward. They all expressed their concern over some of the misdirection that occurred at times during the past two years. They all vowed in some form or another to correct all of that and to move forward as a single unit.

Do they all have to agree on every detail, on every bit of minutia that comes before them? Of course not. Indeed, I’ve witnessed my share of contrarians on previous city governing bodies; I keep thinking of the late Commissioners Jim Simms and Dianne Bosch, both of whom bucked the majority on occasion, but usually found a way to line up with the body when it made its decision.

The new council also no doubt will sit across a table with City Manager Jared Miller and perhaps lay out its expectation. May they understand that the current council acted in good faith by hiring Miller and gave him the authority to run the city administrative machinery. I am hopeful the new council won’t seek to change that arrangement simply because it can.

Yet another new day is about to dawn at Amarillo City Hall. I like the looks and the sounds of the new City Council.

Sure, take a breath. Get some sleep, y’all. It’s not too early, though, to get to work. Talk among yourselves. You have a lot of ground to cover … in a hurry.