The following is the speech Princeton Mayor Liz Lempert gave after being sworn in on Tuesday.
Today is a day for celebration. We’re welcoming a New Year and a new and unified municipality. And we’re also honoring the great history of our town and celebrating this opportunity for an even greater future.
Everyone in our town will play a role in that greater future.
This afternoon, I want to touch briefly on how we got to today and how we will move forward.
First, I want to thank the Girl Scouts for leading us in the Pledge of Allegiance. They did a great job. How about a round of applause for the Girl Scouts?
[Next, I’d also like to recognize several honorary guests who are here with us today.
And I want to acknowledge our new Princeton Council: Bernie Miller, Lance Liverman, Jenny Crumiller, Jo Butler, Heather Howard and Patrick Simon. We have a great, talented team, and I look forward to working with each and every one of you on behalf of our town.
I also want to thank each of you, our community leaders, concerned residents, and our staff for being here today to celebrate this historic moment for Princeton, and for your everyday contributions to making Princeton the success that it is.
Additionally, I want to thank my family my husband Ken, my daughters Madi and Ella, my parents, Sue and Art, who are here visiting from California, and my in-laws, Frank and Sandy Norman. Thank you so much for all you do to support me and allow me to do this job.
Finally, I want to thank former Mayor Dick Woodbridge for swearing me in. Dick postponed his vacation to be here today, and I’m very grateful.
I asked Dick to administer my oath of office because I have tremendous respect for him and his long and continuing record of service to this community. His being here demonstrates that this is a day for coming together. No matter your political persuasion or your feelings about the issues of the day, or on which side of the old Borough-Township line you reside today is the day when we start to build a unified future as Princetonians.
Underlying all my thanks is my belief that when we come together and support each other, we can accomplish great things.
Andrew Carnegie, the industrialist and philanthropist who, among other things, funded the construction of Princeton’s Lake Carnegie, once said, “Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision…It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results.”
Princeton has often served as a setting for “uncommon results.”
From George Washington’s decisive battle victory here on January 3, 1777, to the meeting of the Continental Congress in Nassau Hall, to the 1948 Princeton Plan for school integration, Princeton has had a rich and storied history.
Today, with the beginning of our newly consolidated government, we turn the page and start a new chapter. The big question is what will be the story of Princeton’s consolidation? Will we be a cautionary tale or a model for the state and nation?
There can only be one answer to that question . . . we will succeed.
2012 has been a year of transition. Earlier this morning we had a celebration to thank all the volunteers, elected officials and staff who had helped bring us to this point. We will forever be indebted to those who did this trailblazing, and at times, difficult work.
Princeton is the first major consolidation in the state of New Jersey in over a century. It is fitting role for Princeton we have the most skilled and talented residents of any community and, because of that, we have a duty to lead the way, especially when it comes to good government. Transitioning to a consolidated government has been hard work, and our first years as a single government will be filled with challenges. But if there is any community up for the challenge, it is Princeton.
Before consolidation we were on an unsustainable path fixed costs such as pensions, health care and union contract salaries continue to rise. In order to simply maintain the fiscal status quo, we were faced with deciding between service cuts, staff reductions, or tax increases. In the years leading up to consolidation, both the Borough and Township had reduced the size of their staffs by nearly 20 percent. There was not much left to squeeze. Consolidation was the clearest way to reduce costs without decreasing services.
We haven’t solved all our problems but we are better positioned to alleviate the strain of ever-increasing property taxes. And I’m happy to report that even though consolidation came with substantial one-time transition costs, we will work with staff to put together a budget that requires no municipal tax increase in 2013.
In order for our newly consolidated Princeton to succeed, everyone every resident, every business owner, every property owner has to work together as a team. To that end we will be working closely with every institution in our community including Princeton University. I want to thank Chad Goerner, Anton Lahnston, Barbara Trelstad, and Bill Wakefield for their work on town-gown relations. I’m pleased to announce that the university has invited me to address its board of trustees later this month and, in turn, I have invited the university’s new president, once he or she is selected, to address our council in the fall. Open dialogue and teamwork across the board will ensure that, when the country looks for models of success in implementing consolidation, Princeton is the first example that comes to mind.
One of the greatest benefits of consolidation will be the opportunity we have to enhance the services we provide to the community. By having a single police force, a single public works department, a single administration and a single government, we can deploy our resources more efficiently, combine the best of both the township and borough governments to be more effective, and work as a team instead of at cross purposes.
A prime example of how we can do things better by working together is our recent response to Hurricane Sandy. By having a single emergency operations center with borough and township police and public works crews working in concert under a single leadership we were better able to clear the roads, set up an emergency shelter, and communicate with the public.
Going forward we will seek out other synergies and efficiencies, and I know we will accomplish great things. In the coming years, we’re gong to work to achieve all of the opportunities afforded by consolidation. But it can’t all happen tomorrow. That is why we’re having a goal-setting session this Thursday to begin establishing a list of priorities for this first year. So, you are all invited back here in two days on January 3rd, starting at 5 p.m. Please come to observe or to offer ideas and suggestions.
Your ideas and suggestions are not limited just to this goal-setting session. As your mayor, my door will always be open. I plan to have mayor’s hours the third Thursday of every month. The first session will be on Thursday, January 17, from 5 to 7 p.m., here in this building. In February, I’ll hold mayor’s hours at the former Borough Hall.
Come visit. We’re always looking for good ideas for potential solutions.
If you were here earlier for the consolidation celebration, you may have heard me cite one of my favorite quotations. It’s a great quote for today, the day that our community comes together under a single, more efficient and effective government, so I’m going to cite it again. The quote, originally from Martin Luther King, was a favorite of longtime Princeton resident and community leader, Albert Hinds the namesake of our library’s plaza. Mr. Hinds liked to say:
”It’s always the right time to do the right thing.”
For too long Princeton has been one community with two governments. Coming together and joining forces is the right thing for our town and this is the right time.

