Lancaster voters returned Mayor Rick Gray to office on Tuesday for a second term &tstr; by a narrow margin. But a win is win, and we congratulate him on his re-election.

Now what?

The closeness of the vote &tstr; a mere 313 votes (unofficial results) separated Democrat Gray from his Republican opponent, former mayor Charlie Smithgall &tstr; suggests the mayor has his work cut out for him over the next four years.

The results were especially surprising, given the 13,000 voter-registration edge that Gray and the Democrats enjoy in the city. Many of those voters supported Gray in 2005, the last time he faced Smithgall. But not this time.

Tuesday's results, far from a mandate, reveal an incumbent at odds on some key issues with the people he serves.

On the issue of crime, for example, Gray dismissed Smithgall's claim that residents were worried about their safety.

He used terms like "flat" to describe local crime statistics, inferring that crime isn't a problem or, at least, not the problem Smithgall portrayed in his campaign literature.

Yet, many voters doubtless thought Smithgall had a more realistic view on public safety and voted accordingly.

Among the skeptics who thought Gray's viewpoint too rosy were the members of the Lancaster City Police Officers Association &tstr; those who should know best &tstr; who took the unusual step of publicly criticizing their boss's policies, saying they made the city less safe.

On the issue of neighborhood quality of life, Gray touted strides the city was making in dealing with negligent landlords, disruptive tenants, noise and litter.

But surely, if the progress was as significant as Gray claimed, more voters from the neighborhoods would have recognized the advances and cast their ballots for him. Instead, Gray lost support in the northeast's 6th Ward and the southwest's 8th Ward, both areas where he prevailed four years ago.

On the campaign trail, Gray spoke glowingly of the downtown's resurgence &tstr; a real enough phenomenon, but one for which his predecessor and state lawmakers, notably retired Sen. Gibson Armstrong, deserve credit.

But when it came to the tail-end chores to finish out major downtown revitalization, such as repairing sidewalks, upgrading electrical service and repaving streets, City Hall seemed powerless to get those responsible to work swiftly and efficiently. The work drug on for most of the summer.

The city, of course, was not directly responsible for that repair work. But past mayors have known how to use the bully pulpit to convince state and utility company workers to work with dispatch.

All that said, it must be acknowledged that a majority of voters favored the mayor, endorsing his conduct of city business during the past four years. Now he and an all-Democratic City Council have a second term to continue their agenda.

Our point in listing the issues that motivated the mayor's opposition is not to continue the partisan campaign past the election, but to suggest that there are real issues that matter to voters that City Hall should not dismiss with Pollyannish platitudes.

City Democrats can delude themselves into thinking they were handed a mandate on Tuesday, but that would be a mistake.

Far from celebrating, Gray and the Democrats should consider Tuesday's startling results a wake-up call --  an opportunity to deal with problems, not ignore them.