Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio reaches the halfway point of her term this week with a solid if sometimes sluggish record of moving the city forward. She has shifted the focus from big-ticket projects to neighborhood concerns, made city government more ethical and more responsive, and highlighted regional problems from the need to coordinate transportation planning to addressing crime, homelessness and jobs. But she also has been slow to deliver on several core campaign goals, from turning around struggling east Tampa to creating a downtown arts district. Iorio's fresh perspective and no-nonsense approach both inspired and reassured voters in the wake of the developer-mayor, Dick Greco. She quickly changed the wheeling-dealing City Hall culture, replacing every major department head, centralizing the decisionmaking process and instilling higher standards for ethics and accountability. While it took too long to put her senior staff in place, the diverse, outside voices she brought into city government well serve a community where a growing middle class is changing Tampa's political culture. She has shifted money to the neighborhoods and spread the budget more equally to pay for anticrime and cleanup efforts in the blight-filled central city. The parks and streets in almost every part of town are in noticeably better shape, and capital spending for roads, sewers and other public needs is proceeding along a fair schedule with the right priorities in mind. Iorio preceded her cleanup plan with a broad crackdown on drug-dealing and street-level nuisance crime. That energized neighborhood groups, who see an ally in the mayor's office, and cleared the way for the city to follow up with code-enforcement efforts. East Tampa, Seminole Heights and other back-burner neighborhoods will not evolve into distinct business districts for years, but the infrastructure is going in. Iorio's two big setbacks were the failed downtown Civitas project, a redevelopment killed by Hillsborough County, and the delay in breaking ground on a new arts museum. She never seemed comfortable with either, and both consumed an inordinate amount of time. If housing is to come to north downtown and a museum is to spawn an entire arts district, the mayor will need to get more involved. She will need to light a fire under her bureaucracy. The city's housing program is only now beginning to recover from a four-year bribery scandal. Iorio's administration inherited that mess, along with a bailout in Ybor City. But she also brings a play-it-safe mentality that could make it more difficult for her to achieve her own goals. Two years is a relatively short period to assess a mayor's performance. Iorio has shifted the focus, as she said she would, and she enters the second half of her term with an administration stronger and more in synch with her agenda. She appears enormously popular and is skillful at using the bully pulpit of the mayor's office. Her challenge will continue to be meeting the heightened expectations of the neighborhoods without giving up on her larger goals.