Photo by Kyle Gustafson

Standing in front of a packed auditorium in the Community Academy Public Charter School in Ward 5 last night, presumptive Mayor-elect Vince Gray fielded a question from an audience member on an issue that has long divided the District — gentrification.

“There are no glib answers,” he started. “Well, there are glib answers, but I refuse to give them.”

And such went the first in a series of town halls that will take Gray to every ward in the city in the coming weeks, where he has promised to listen to the concerns and opinions of residents in a city starkly divided by race, class and geography.

What started as something of a pro-Gray pep rally courtesy of Council member Harry Thomas, Jr. (D-Ward 5) quickly turned into a somber and detail-oriented discussion of some of the city’s most pressing issues. Gray could well have used the opportunity to make ambitious promises, or he could have simply rattled off a list of the things Mayor Adrian Fenty did that he planned to undo. The crowd was a friendly one, after all, having voted in his favor to the tune of 75 percent.

But he didn’t. Whether on homelessness, education reform or the District’s financial future, Gray delved into the most minute details of the policies he is likely to deal with, publicly grappled with the dilemmas inherent in governing and laid down the stark facts of the city’s financial standing in clear terms. And if anyone expected him to be reflexively anti-Fenty, he wasn’t.