Three years ago the "For the City" ticket of Alfred Dowe, Gwen Mason and David Trinkle cruised to victory, winning all three open Roanoke City Council seats.

Forming a council majority with then-Mayor Nelson Harris, the group read their sweep as a voter mandate and set out to put their campaign platform into action.

Now the group has fractured, having accomplished few of its stated goals.

Harris and Dowe are gone -- the former defeated in last year's mayoral election and the latter having resigned after an expense scandal.

And on Monday, the city council voted 4-2 to remove construction of an amphitheater -- a major plank in the For the City platform -- from its five-year capital spending plan.

On Tuesday, Mason, the second leading vote-getter in the 2006 election and now a candidate for the Virginia House of Delegates, called a news conference in front of the Noel C. Taylor Municipal Building to explain why she voted against the amphitheater.

Trinkle -- the leading vote-getter in 2006 -- missed the vote because he was on vacation, but he wrote on his blog that if he'd known about this outcome, he might have taken a different stance on another For the City campaign plank.

"If I knew then what I know now, I honestly do not believe I would support the tearing down of the obsolete Victory Stadium," Trinkle wrote. "If I knew how hard it was to start bold capital improvement projects in Roanoke, I would have supported a renovation of Victory Stadium to present day usage -- namely an outdoor performing arts venue."

Trinkle also expressed disappointment that Monday's vote was taken when he was absent. Mason said that Trinkle's presence wouldn't have made a difference -- the motion to remove the amphitheater still would have passed, she said, but by a 4-3 instead of a 4-2 vote.

The news conference and blog post underscore just how much the council's dynamics have changed over three years. Much of the change stems from last year's elections, when David Bowers was elected mayor over Harris, and Sherman Lea, Anita Price and Court Rosen won council seats.

Lea won the most votes, which made him vice mayor and catapulted him into more of a leadership role. He's since taken a more active role on the council than during his first term, working with a variety of council members to reach four or more votes on a number of issues.

Although he was pegged by election opponents as a For the City pawn, Rosen, the youngest of the new council members, has quickly become an aggressive and vocal member of the council who has successfully pushed for some of his own proposals.

Since then the council has become more unpredictable, as a consistent, four-member majority has given way to a constantly shifting set of alliances that varies with each new issue.

The formerly tight bond between Mason and Trinkle, meanwhile, has frayed. Although each expressed support for the other, they both acknowledged that they've grown apart.

"Life is different now than it was then," Mason said. "I think relationships and alliances change. You may come in as freshmen together, but everybody is an independent voice and vote on council. Everybody reaches independent conclusions."

Nowhere was this more apparent than on the amphitheater issue.

Mason voted with Trinkle in 2006 to locate the amphitheater on the former Victory Stadium site by the Roanoke River. In the following months she could be counted on to side with him on most amphitheater-related votes as well. As recently as this month, she was part of a 6-1 majority that informally voted to spend $1.2 million on architectural and engineering work for the amphitheater.

But Mason's tone has changed considerably in recent months. At her Tuesday news conference she said the council should pursue a more fiscally conservative path and focus spending on schools and needed infrastructure instead of new building projects.

"As each family knows, you don't splurge on dessert if you're not sure you can afford dinner," Mason said.

She also questioned a proposal to spend $2 million on improvements to Countryside Golf Course and $3.6 million to make the swimming pool at Washington Park into a water park.

Although Mason called for the news conference as a councilwoman, she's also in the middle of a campaign for the state House.

She said that her campaign did factor into her vote, in that she's spoken to a large number of Roanoke Valley residents who are worried about the economy.

"It only takes talking to a couple of people who've lost their jobs to really put a human face on the economic travails we're facing," Mason said.

Trinkle -- who had also considered running for the House before Mason solidified her support for the Democratic nomination -- said he wouldn't be surprised if political considerations factored into her vote as well.

"Anytime you have a vote that goes from 6-1 to 4-2 in a matter of two weeks without any real new information on that particular project, you've really got to think politics entered the picture," Trinkle said. "She is running for delegate. I know she's concerned, obviously like anybody in that position would be, with how her votes look during the campaign. That may be partly why she voted as she did. Of course it's always a safer bet to say you have to put money in infrastructure and schools."

Trinkle said that despite his disappointment, he has no plans to bring the amphitheater issue back for another debate.