After four controversial years, Nelson Harris will be replaced Tuesday as mayor of Roanoke by David Bowers, who defeated him in May's city council elections.

The Roanoke Times spoke last week with Harris about his tenure on the council, the state of the city and what's next.

Q: The issue of Victory Stadium dominated much of your time on council. How do you think it affected Roanoke?

Harris: I think your assessment is exactly correct in that that was the dominant issue the first two years of my term. It was clear to me when I began my term that the Victory Stadium issue had to be resolved. It was consuming far too much psychological and political energy within this community, to the extent that no other issues or agendas were being given focus.

At the time we had a divided council -- which was reflective of a divided community -- [with] very passionate emotions on both sides. We had very difficult meetings, public meetings, with three hours of speakers and so on and so forth.

At the end of the day for me, it basically came down to two things: One was, what is in the best financial interest of the city? We had a proposed $21 million rehabilitation of Victory Stadium versus a $8.5 million collective estimated cost on stadiums at the high schools.

The second issue for me was what's in the best long-term interest of those that will actually use the stadium, which would be the school system and the students? To me, having the stadiums on the campuses proper brought an extra and valued element to the campuses and to student life that could not occur by having Victory Stadium ... .

With those two things answered in my mind, I felt like going with the high school stadiums was the best option.

Q: It seems like there are still lingering echoes of that debate.

Harris: I think one kind of piece of the Victory Stadium legacy would be that certainly that the elected leadership, and I would say the community at large, does not want nor need other issues that will linger undecided for a decade.

The fault that some people may point to the current council on is, well, we're rushing decisions now. We're not taking our time or getting input from the community.

That may be fair, but I think one of the legacies of Victory Stadium is nobody wants another Victory Stadium. And I'm not talking about the stadium; I'm talking about an issue that just lingers and consumes so much psychological and political energy in this community because the elected leadership is not courageous enough to make a decision ... .

I think another legacy of Victory Stadium is that it does in my mind serve as evidence about the embedded resistance to change in Roanoke. That's certainly not true about all Roanokers, but clearly there is a significant slice of the voting population that basically wants Roanoke to remain as it is.

Q: Your campaign slogan was "Let's keep Roanoke moving forward." What does Roanoke need to do to move forward?

Harris: Job one would be, we have to have a school system with improved student performance. We can do all kinds of things as a city, but young families are not going to live here in the city proper if we do not have a better-performing school system.

With that said, that means that the school board and the superintendent are going to have to make some gutsy decisions and some bold moves. Council has to be supportive of that.

That's why during the campaign when it became clear that Forest Park Elementary School was going to be closed for the creation of an overage academy to address the dropout problem, I thought that was the right move by our superintendent. I applauded her courage to do that. My opponent took the opposite tack.

To me that in many ways illustrates, if we're going to move forward, we're going to have to think differently, we're going to have to act boldly, even if it creates discomfort in the community ... .

The second thing, we cannot continue to have a politically lethargic business community. I realize that many business leaders in our city do not necessarily reside in the city, but that is not an excuse for them to be disengaged in local government and in the election process ... . The private sector has to do some things that the public sector cannot, and vice versa. And they have to operate in tandem.

Simply cutting a check every couple of elections and sitting on the sidelines is not leadership. Back in the '60s and '70s in this city, the president of the railroad, the president of Shenandoah Life Insurance Company, bank presidents -- served on the school board. At one time, like Nick Taubman [former chief executive officer of Advance Auto] -- was on the city council. Frank Clement -- he's now deceased, but at the time was the CEO of Shenandoah Life -- was on the council ...

The third thing is that we, at the moment, lack a cohesive regional agenda ... There is still lacking what I consider to be a cohesive compelling regional economic agenda. When we're competing against Charlotte-Mecklenburg -- which I think in 2007 grew by 70,000 people and 30,000 new jobs -- when we're competing against Northern Virginia, we're not competing against other cities, we're competing against other regions. We need to understand that.

Q: There was a long period of council stability under Mayor Noel Taylor. But since then turnover has been high. I understand there have been 14 different council members since [Roanoke City Manager] Darlene Burcham started in late 1999. Can you talk about the effect that has on governing?

Harris: When there is that much turnover, and I think your number's correct, it really is hard to move forward in a timely and efficient way, because what happens is you end up revisiting issues, you end up consuming staff time and all of that costs money. You lose momentum. Frankly, those are things we can't afford to lose, in my opinion.

Q: You said election night that this is it for you. Now that you've had some weeks to mull it over, is that still true? Are you done with elected office?

Harris: I think so. Counting when I first got appointed to the school board, [I] served four years on the school board, the last two as chairman.

Segued straight from that to city council, eight years of city council, four of those as vice mayor, and the last four years as mayor -- that's 16 consecutive years in public office, 12 of which were elected.

I leave feeling good about that service. But for me personally, there are other things I want to do ... In terms of elected politics, I served my time, and I leave with my head up and feel good about it.