ROCHESTER, N.Y. — In a boardroom near the top of One East Avenue, Malik Evans meets with the two people who spend more time with him than any others these days.

"What time is that?" says Evans, the mayor-elect of Rochester, as he rubs his temples with his left thumb and index finger. It is early August, still four and a half months from his next assignment.

"Six o’clock," answers Daniella Veras, an Evans confidant and schedule keeper from the city councilman's successful run for mayor. She's making Evans aware of an interview he has with a reporter helping to publish the latest power list in New York.

"Yeah. Yeah. I can’t," Evans says. "I can’t. I don’t want to hear it. I’m not into all those power lists and all that other nonsense."

Wasting time's not an option for the man who defeated incumbent Lovely Warren in a June Democratic mayoral primary. That win allowed Evans to enjoy more time than any mayor-elect has ever had to prepare for his administration's arrival.

It gave him six months to, as he likes to say, build bridges to Rochester's future.

“The key thing is we want to operationalize what is on that wall there," said Evans. "Our mission, vision, values. And that’s very important. I’m glad we’ve done that. Obviously, we interviewed lots and lots of people to join the administration. We’ve met with hundreds of community business folks all throughout. So we did not let any grass grow under our feet. But it’s starting to get a lot more real.”

Building equity and rebuilding trust in city government are ways this at-large city councilman plans to shape his time in city hall. Evans leveraged his council seat to sew some of the seeds of his new administration. He is an exhaustive worker, a meal misser who learned during this transition if he's going to make city government healthy, he has to eat.

"I never thought that it would be something that I would have to write down on the calendar. 'Hold for lunch,' " said Evans. "Because, literally, this transition process, and I know the mayor's office will literally be the same way, it can consume you. I literally have 30 things to do right now I could literally just keep doing those things and I won’t think twice about it.'

Time may wait for no one, but it seems to have waited for Evans, a Wilson Magnet grad, voted most likely to succeed, who wrote in his yearbook that he wanted to become president of the United States. It's what you'd expect from the fourth child of six children of a legendary Rochester minister and his wife.

Leveraging his council seat helped Evans develop a commission that'll advise the city on how to get into the legal marijuana market, a potentially lucrative new revenue generator and equity builder.

Evans' sons Cameron and Carter are never far away when it comes to his path to the corner office on city hall's second floor.

"I appreciate them lending their dad to the community for the greater good of Rochester," said Evans. " 'How late are you going to be at the office?' They get it. They know what’s going on. They’ve been involved in this campaign; they both have their office here."

Capable of a preacher's oratory, Evans is not a natural frontman. He arrives as mayor more comfortable with just doing the work and having things done the right way for people the way he's done as a financial advisor at ESL Federal Credit Union.

Still, both modus operandi help him expand his reach as mayor in waiting, like a fundraiser with his wife Shawanda, to a community that questions its core.

"I think it’s a challenge to temper expectations," said Evans. "With other folks supporting you, that’s how it’s going to happen. So that’s what I’m trying to do. Go about the process."

Ask him if he's had enough time, and Evans will tell you the challenges that Rochester faces are too complex for that to be possible. With campaign aides Veras and Courtney Thomas by his side, Evans downplays the idea of a head start for the job ahead.

"It’s allowed me to spend a lot of time researching and analyzing departments," Evans said. "So we were able to use our core, our ready team to do a deep dive in all these departments. So they gave me a great time, but that time is good but it’s also challenging because people were expecting you to do things and you have to remind people that you are not the mayor until January 1. So it gives you more of that runway, but it's a blessing and it is also a curse."