By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
The last Township Committee meeting of 2017 on Monday was also the last one for Deputy Mayor Susan Goetz, who is retiring from municipal government after six years.
Goetz, a Democrat who declined to run for re-election in November, thanked her supporters and others in a community that she had helped lead during two terms that seemed to go by fast.
“I can’t believe it’s been six years,” she said from the dais where her nameplate marked the spot where she sits. “You know, Township Committee was one of the most exhilarating things that I’ve done, besides being a mother and raising my family here.”
Goetz, a native of Ohio, has lived in Cranbury for 38 years. She joined the Township Committee in 2012 and, two years later, she was named mayor.
Township Committeeman and fellow Democrat Glenn Johnson shared a story of how Goetz was recruited to run for public office in 2011.
“We did not have somebody by the time we came to the petition filing date, in March,” he said. “So we continued to work on it.”
He said he had called Goetz the Sunday night before the primary to ask her to run.
“She asked me what was involved. And I said, ‘Well you attend two meetings a month,’ ” he said in a comment that drew a laugh given the workload is more than just two meetings a month.
Mayor David Cook read aloud a resolution that touched on her public service, including supporting acquiring open space and preserving farmland.
“I can say that I’m proud to have spent the amount of time and made the decisions that we’ve made as a Township Committee along with Susan,” Cook said, “because so many of those decisions make Cranbury the way it is and what we experience now.”
Later in her remarks, Goetz singled out her successor, Democrat Matt Scott, sitting in the front row of the meeting room. She said the two of them had met to help prepare him for what he will encounter come January when he takes office.
“He’s really asking the right things,” she said.
Her departure means the five-member governing body will have no women in 2018.
