The last week of the second year of Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl's mayoralty should have been one of putting the city on autopilot, schmoozing and playing a bit part in history.

But as his staff worked on things like finishing the forms needed for a delayed disruptive property crackdown, and the mayor settled into the role of delegate to the Democratic National Convention, another in a series of personnel blowups dragged him from Denver back to the trench warfare of city government.

This time it was Urban Redevelopment Authority Executive Director Pat Ford's resignation letter, which called Mr. Ravenstahl's a "failed administration."

The mayor said he was "blindsided" and "saddened" and argued that there was nothing failed about his improbable tenure. He said he's "taken a comprehensive look at everything," with results beginning to emerge.

Two years ago, Mayor Bob O'Connor died and Mr. Ravenstahl ascended from the council presidency. Two years is half of a normal mayoral term. But for the Ravenstahl administration, it's the mid-point between November's general election victory and May's Democratic primary, when he'll have successes to point to and gaps to explain.

The city bank account, approaching $93 million, is eight times what it was in the darkest days of near-bankruptcy. The city has stopped borrowing, and the principal on its debt is $100 million less than it was in 2004.

The city's pension pot, though, is $569 million short of ideal levels -- a gap that has grown and could drive up the infusions of tax dollars needed to keep the fund solvent.

The gap, one of the worst in the state, "is not good. It's far from it," said James McAneny, executive director of the state Public Employee Retirement Commission, which handles state aid to municipal pension funds.

Mr. Ravenstahl is trying to rally other mayors to support a raft of proposals including changes in state aid formulas and mergers of city, county and state pension pots.

"Even if [state lawmakers] embrace our entire action plan that we will put forward, it's still not enough to make us whole," Mr. Ravenstahl said.

The police force has reached the long-sought 900-officer level. The mayor's office reports the lowest overall level of serious crime since 1967, though violent crime and murders are stubbornly flat in recent years.

Mr. Ravenstahl noted that efforts like the deployment of security cameras, investments in technology and tearing down abandoned buildings where criminals operate could pay off long-term.

The mayor's reopening of the West End police station might be a sign of things to come, said Public Safety Director Michael Huss, adding that the city will weigh the benefits of any more zone stations against the costs.

The station is popular.

"If there's one thing Zone 6 has proven, it's that with a smaller zone, and a concentration of police, you can have success," said Norene Beatty, a member of the West End's Weed and Seed Committee.

The mayor's efforts to make city government more diverse have yielded mixed results.

There are women and African Americans in mayor's office jobs -- though not the top gigs -- and his police and fire chiefs are both black.

Of his appointees to city boards and commissions, 48 percent have been women, while 38 percent have been minorities.

"This is marked growth and improvement, and the data affirms that the system is working, but it also demonstrates that continued improvements are necessary," said Heather Arnet, executive director of the Women and Girls Foundation. "There are still some powerful [panels] with zero women serving on them and that is unacceptable."

The board that oversees the pension fund, for instance, is all white men.

"Those commissions that carry a lot of power, reach, authority need to be weighted differently," said Celeste Taylor, vice chairwoman of the Black Political Empowerment Project. Some of those have very few women and minorities.

A year-old effort to recruit women and minorities to city jobs has boosted the diversity of applicants, but hasn't yet changed the demographics of the work force.

"You can change a culture of thought over a six-month period, but that doesn't mean the troops on the ground will necessarily reflect that," Mr. Ravenstahl said.

The Pittsburgh Promise -- a pledge of college aid to Pittsburgh Public Schools graduates with C averages or better -- "is, by far for me, the greatest accomplishment that we've had," he said. Between 800 and 900 graduates are expected to tap the new fund this year. Thanks to a University of Pittsburgh Medical Center pledge, the effort has enough money for a few years, but the terms of UPMC's commitment require some $134 million more in fund raising. It will happen, the mayor said.

"There are going to be kids that will be going to school that are hopefully my kid's kids that are going to benefit from a decision [schools Superintendent] Mark Roosevelt and I made [in 2006] to stand up for something we believed in," he said.

The mayor's wife, Erin, is expecting their first child Nov. 1.

Development is up, with the dollar value of building permits during the first half of this year higher than that for any of the last three entire years.

To keep that going, the city has to keep paring down the bureaucratic process, said Rich Stanizzo, business manager of the Pittsburgh Building and Construction Trades Council.

"We still see the same [delays] we saw a couple of years ago, despite the fact that it's getting better," Mr. Stanizzo said.

Streamlining the bureaucracy was Mr. Ford's mission.

His resignation continues a string of personnel issues Mr. Ravenstahl has faced, from his promotion of former Operations Director Dennis Regan to public safety director, to his requests when he took office for resignations from 11 directors, most of which he turned down.

"I am worried the continuing personnel drama surrounding this administration will negatively impact the lives of Pittsburgh's citizens," wrote city Councilman William Peduto in an e-mail last week.

Council President Doug Shields said blowups like Mr. Ford's resignation in the wake of a billboard dispute and gift-giving probe, and spats with council, "are all self-inflicted, and it was the result of excesses by people in power."

Mr. Ravenstahl attributed the staff churn to "the way I became mayor."

"I didn't have the ability, nor the base, nor the relationships, so to speak, to have a pool or a pot of qualified people who had been Ravenstahl loyalists," he said. Instead, he had Mr. O'Connor's team.

"My first six months here, for me to walk around and not necessarily be comfortable in what I said, or what I did, or who I talked to, or who I didn't talk to, that's a bad atmosphere to made decisions and be effective."

He said he's hoping to remain mayor until the job can be eliminated in a government consolidation.

"If I'm the guy who has to take the bullets and take the hard times in order to make others experience good times," he said, "then that's something I'm willing to do, and hopefully I will have the opportunity to do that for some time."