AUBURN — Mayor Jonathan LaBonte said his reputation for being prickly at meetings was likely earned, but he’s learning to tone it down.

“I’ve certainly softened since we came out of the gate,” LaBonte said. “There was the podium laid out; it was going to be very formal at City Council meetings. We wanted people to sign in. But folks were very upset by that.”

LaBonte is unopposed in his journey toward a second term as Auburn’s mayor. With no opponents, he said he’s focusing on the issues that will be important to the city over the next year: regional transportation, economic development and the growing relationship with Lewiston.

“We need strong cities here to compete,” LaBonte said. “We’re talking a long-term, 50- to 75-year horizon. Maybe I’m gone; maybe I’m around and aged, but that’s what we need to think about.”

The city has come a long way since LaBonte and the current council began their terms in 2011. The city had no manager, no assistant manager, no finance director, no fire chief and a brand-new city clerk.

“And then we had four new city councilors — people who had never been in elected office — and you count me, five who had never been in municipal office,” LaBonte said. “We had to navigate a manager’s search and a budget and bring ourselves up to speed on the role of being a City Council. There was a lot going on, and for me to try to navigate the proper role for mayor without overstepping my bounds.”

He’s looking forward to two more years.

“It’s been a fun process, but bumpy as hell,” LaBonte said. “But in a good way. I’ve learned how to work with some councilors, how to hear what they are saying, even if I don’t agree all the time.”

LaBonte said city leaders are settling in and moving forward now.

“We filled our department ranks, so we have those positions filled,” he said. “Staff morale has turned. We’re building an arena for the city, and that was a bold move.”

LaBonte said he’s pleased that the city insisted on setting a bus depot and transportation center downtown. He hopes work building it near Hannaford supermarket will begin in the spring, with a potential opening in the summer.

It’s key to creating a Twin Cities transportation hub downtown, linking buses and trains with downtown commerce.

“What this council did was going from a bus shelter to really leveraging a federal benefit,” LaBonte said. “We’re talking with the Maine Office of Tourism to make sure that we put the elements to make it a visitors’ center for people going up to the western mountains.”

He imagines the center will be key to providing regular bus service to Portland and beyond, saying he’d like to include bus service to Boston by the end of his next term.

LaBonte said he still thinks its important to use the City Council’s regular meetings for formal business. He’d rather see them used like a corporate meeting of a business with $2 billion in assets.

“But that means we need to provide a better way to get public debate,” LaBonte said. “We better have forums, we better have a means for people to sit down and have those conversations. I don’t know what that’s going to look like yet, but we are working on it.”

[email protected]