Frustration seems to be endemic within the Lock Haven City Council chamber lately.

Following the abrupt firing of former city manager, Greg Wilson, to start the year, city staff have been doing an admirable job holding it together under assuredly stressful circumstances.

To all outside appearances, city staff had a healthy — and efficient — dynamic with Wilson, and shaking that up has caused challenges enough on its own.

However, city council seems unwilling to let those challenges be all that the staff have to deal with, as the once-settled new police building is now being revisited in light of a funding gap.

And while the 6-1 vote to rebid the general construction of the building seems to be roughly in accordance with the plan — Mayor Joel Long’s no-vote serving as the only outlier — the hostility and vitriol that surrounds the issue is a rattlesnake warning about the lack of cohesive vision that swirls about City Hall.

It is natural and healthy for there to be debate and difference whenever any group of people from varying backgrounds and experiences come together to try to chart a course together.

However, ultimately there must be a willingness to abide by the will of the majority — and to accept that a course must be set.

Councilmember Heather Alexander was among those frustrated, commenting on how long the process was taking and that she “would rather see there be some sort of something going even if it’s in this building now versus waiting.”

Considering that she ended up voting in favor of the rebid, it is likely this comes from a place of irritation as opposed to any legitimate desire to reopen the months of debate which led to the police building project in the first place.

In our view, it would be good to let that lion lay sleeping.

At this time of transition in the city’s official structure, council should be seeking to keep an even keel while seeking a new permanent manager, and not taking advantage of the opportunity to rehash old disagreements.

That the seemingly sudden firing of Wilson represented a shift in the city’s power dynamics appears obvious.

All too often, in these types of situations, the ascendent group seeks to challenge previously settled decisions that they disagreed with — and while that is perhaps fair from some viewpoints, we hold that it would be a detriment to the city in which we work, live and love.

In fact, such challenges would represent a massive delay akin to the one that Alexander expressed concern about.

If the goal is genuinely to attend to the betterment of the city and its residents — current and future — then charting steady waters for city staff should be high on the list.

Support the city staff while the search for a new manager spins up. It’s a difficult and frustrating time, and it would be easy for the uncertainties of the period to spill over into a lack of decisive vision for what Lock Haven’s future should look like.

Endlessly revisiting the same topics won’t get us to any kind of effective future.

It should be possible to set aside past disagreement for the sake of the city, and work to make a major, and contentious, project such as the police building the most functional, efficient and cost-effective it can be.

The search for a new city manager will be starting soon, with council looking to create a temporary hiring committee — details to be determined at the next meeting.

Until that search concludes successfully and the next city manager is found and hits their stride, we feel it would be best for Lock Haven — and the city staff who are still serving all of us without Wilson’s leadership — for council to stay its course.