In a pair of ceremonies yesterday, newly elected and re-elected City Council members received oaths and assumed responsibility for leading our community during the coming term. My inaugural remarks, which follow below, were quite simple and brief, because I felt that the ceremony should focus primarily on the Council Members taking office for the first time and not so much on those of us returning to the same post. We will surely confront difficult choices in the months ahead, but I am eager to get to work and excited about our many opportunities for progress. Happy New Year!
Inaugural Remarks of Mayor Noam Bramson
January 1, 2012
Good afternoon. This is a day of new beginnings. A new year. A new term. A new council. I congratulate and extend a hand of partnership to each of my colleagues of both parties. We are privileged together to receive the trust of the people of our city. Now we must prove worthy of that trust, in both purpose and deed.
We should do so fully mindful of the difficult challenges that confront New Rochelle — fiscal, economic, environmental and human — yet knowing also that in each of these challenges is the seed of opportunity, ready to be nurtured by our labors and our faith.
So let us in the months ahead refresh the priorities of local government to align wisely with an era of limits. Let us build a more vital and vibrant community center, drawing on the energy of mass transit and the appeal of the shore to attract the next wave of investment. Let us achieve a higher quality of life for our residents, in accord with greener practices. And let us position New Rochelle to capture the imagination and the allegiance of a new generation of families, workers and entrepreneurs, who see in this place the diversity of view and experience that has always been our finest quality.
Successful leadership balances realism and optimism in equal measure, faces our problems with candor and political courage, while also seizing with determination and genuine excitement every possibility for a better future, confident that the hardest choices can produce the greatest rewards.
This must be our commitment. This is our commitment.
So let me affirm today that I believe in New Rochelle. I believe in what we are and what we represent. And I believe that our best days as a community are still to come.
Thank you for the privilege of service. May the hopeful spirit of this New Year guide our works.