I don't know if the war's over. Or if it just began.

I hope for the former. I fear the latter.

Everything at Birmingham City Hall has changed. A new mayor takes office next month. A new council was sworn in this week and new officers elected. Those who wielded power in recent years find themselves in the wings. A majority of council members - new faces and old ones who endured powerlessness - have taken posts of prominence.

Valerie Abbott, a 16-year veteran of the Birmingham City Council known for fiscal accountability and dry disdain for drama, is City Council President.

Jay Roberson - a veteran who was thought the favorite for that job - is president pro-tem.

And some of the most dominant forces remaining from the previous council - Lashunda Scales and Steven Hoyt - find themselves in diminished positions.

It could be explosive, for the tension between Abbott and some of the others has been, well, palpable in the past.

There was that time former Council President Johnathan Austin tried to push her and former council member Kim Rafferty out of their offices so Scales and council member Sheila Tyson could have better spaces.

It didn't end well.

Birmingham City Council President Valerie Abbott and Mayor-elect Randall Woodfin

But Abbott said after she was elected she intends to be fair. And that's a start. It is more than we've dared hope.

But is it enough? Can she do it?

She has experience. She came onto the council in 2001 in one of the biggest throw-the-bums-out movements in Birmingham history. She worked through mayors Bernard Kincaid, Larry Langford and William Bell - not to mention a few interims.

She outlasted Joel Montgomery and Gwen Sykes and all of the 2001 council class. She outlasted Austin and Rafferty and many more, because her district thought she stood for it and against waste.

Now she will, as president, have to stand for the entire city. That can be hard when other council members stand first for their districts.

The elephant in the room - it has been discussed only in whispers outside a few talk radio rants - is that Abbott is white, in a city where 73 percent of the population is black.

She was elected by the will of a nine-member council in which six of the members are black. It is quite a statement. And quite a challenge.

It's a challenge because, more than anything, this council and Mayor-elect Randall Woodfin will be judged on whether they can move this city forward. Not in lockstep. Not arm-and-arm as if without disagreement, but with respect. For one another and for all the people of this city, no matter what they look like or where they live.

It's not a matter of counting to five votes any more. It's not a matter of who gets power and who gets the spoils. The days of childish City Hall fights must be over, because the city cannot survive them.

Woodfin said he's confident in the council and its new leadership, that communication is more important than race.

"Valerie Abbott and I have to overcommunicate," he said, and she must do the same with all eight of the other council members.

They'll start with performance audits to find out what ails us and how to cure it, he said. But what he said next is the thing that gives me hope.

"Whatever medicine we need to take, the 10 of us need to take it," he said. "Together."

The 10 of us. The mayor and council. Together.

I don't know if the war is over, or if it's just begun. But that's a good place to start.

John Archibald's column appears in The Birmingham News, the Huntsville Times, the Mobile Register and AL.com. Write him at jarchibald@al.com.