Eldridge Hawkins’ Remarks upon his Inauguration as Mayor of Orange

Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Good afternoon and thanks to all of you for joining together with me in this ceremony celebrating a new direction for Orange.

I want to especially thank former Governor Dick Codey for his service to New Jersey and to our community and for his hard work and determination to make this day of change possible.

I thank Newark Mayor Cory Booker for his strong support in my campaign and for serving as an inspiration of what an urban mayor can be, and Senator Lautenberg for all of his wonderful support.

I thank the members of our City Council for joining me today and for your past and future service to our city. I want to thank my fellow candidates for Mayor who debated the issues and waged vigorous and fair campaigns.

My deepest thanks are to my family whose support, help and confidence in me made this day possible. 

And, I want to especially thank my friends, supporters, the citizens of Orange and all of the elected officials here today.

Today, we come together to mark an important milestone in the history of Orange, a day that marks a transition and a new beginning,

It is with profound humility about the task that lies before us and filled with great hope for what I know we will achieve, that I stand before you to announce that our time for change has arrived.

This election was not about electing one person as mayor. Rather it was about what we the people together chose for the future of our city.

We chose to restore trust in the integrity and competence of our government.

We chose to make our streets and our homes safer, to make Orange more attractive to tax-paying businesses, and to do a better job of educating, not just our children, but our adults and seniors as well.

We chose hope. We chose the belief that Orange can be the next “happening” city. The next Hoboken or Montclair.

We chose to build public-private partnerships, to enlist the business community of Orange, of Essex County, and indeed the entire New York metropolitan area to work with us in revitalizing our city.

We chose to have confidence that Orange has the location, public transportation, housing stock, and human talent not just to survive, but to thrive.

We chose to have a government in which every department and every employee will be held accountable for their performance and in which that performance will be systematically and fairly evaluated.

And we chose an administration determined to unite and not to divide… an administration that confidently welcomes and encourages citizen participation, and will not operate in secrecy behind closed doors.

The people of Orange thirst for an open administration that will listen carefully and take advice. In the past two weeks, our transition team has been holding unprecedented public meetings to hear the ideas and complaints of citizens regarding public safety, housing, development, quality of life and other critical issues.

I have been inspired, energized, and deeply moved by the large attendance at these meetings, the wonderful ideas and suggestions we have received, and the fierce determination of citizens to get involved and cooperate with each other to make our city better.

Many years ago, Orange was thriving and because of that, our city has a history of greatness.  In fact, the Valley neighborhood of Orange had the nation's biggest producer of hats. There were 34 hat-making factories clustered in one small part of this town, including the F. Berg Hat Manufacturing Company complex.  However, that was at the beginning of the 20th century. Orange has changed much since then.

 Today, these same buildings are nothing more than run down relics of what once was.  Such images must no longer exist in our town.  For too long we have watched our city deteriorate and its progress be paralyzed by those unable or unwilling to put their feelings, personal agendas and differences aside for the good of Orange.

Well, it’s a new day and I believe that together we will unify this city, work through our differences and find common ground to move the city forward. It’s a new day and change is on the horizon.

At the end of the first hundred days of our new administration, people will know that Orange is a city on the move.

We will make Public Safety a priority so that you and your children can once again feel safe to walk the streets at night. We all need to know that if we dial 911 because someone is breaking into a car or that a house is on fire, well-trained personnel will respond immediately.

As a law enforcement professional, I will work to bring our police department into the 21st Century, deploying the most advanced crime fighting technologies. We will place video surveillance cameras in high crime areas, equip patrol cars with computers, and upgrade our technology to increase our Compstat capabilities.

We will build a strong partnership with state, county and federal police agencies, and restore their confidence in law enforcement in Orange. We will aggressively seek public and private grants to fund our public safety programs. We will also use Special Police to supplement the regular force.

We will rely on Community Policing to build a stronger relationship between our communities and the police department and to involve citizens as direct partners in fighting crime.

I am mindful of the fact that I begin my term as mayor in the midst of a recession and in a time of high energy costs. I am also painfully aware that property taxes in Orange have become so high that many, particularly seniors on fixed incomes, can no longer afford to remain in their homes.

So, you ask, how can I keep my pledge to hold the line on taxes?

I have a long-term answer, and a short-term one.

In the long-term, the answer is economic development through commercial and residential redevelopment. It means attracting new tax-paying businesses and helping our existing businesses to grow and thrive.

We will redevelop abandoned and underutilized buildings. In doing this we will model ourselves after cities such as Newark that have successfully begun to reinvent themselves.

We will aggressively market the City of Orange by launching a major initiative to show businesses the enormous advantages of locating here.

We will show major retailers they can make money in Orange and expand our retail base beyond the 99 Cent stores.

We will make sure that redevelopment projects like the Berg Hat Factory and the old Orange Memorial Hospital finally break ground.  We are only 2.2 sq miles, in size. But we are only 20 min. by train from one of the most exciting cultural hubs of the world, New York City.

Many of us would like to see upscale businesses come to town… maybe a Starbucks or a Gap. So would I.  But the reality is, those businesses will not come here until it becomes profitable to do so.  They need to see a city on the rise and a population or demographic that can support these businesses. 

As redevelopment continues, Orange will evolve and become more appealing to businesses.   We will change the economics of our city by re-invigorating partnerships with our Chamber of Commerce, merchants and Urban Enterprise Zone members.

The first step we will take toward redevelopment is to confront the quality of life issues that are dragging us down.  In the first few months of our administration, you will begin to see a cleaner more beautiful Orange and an environment that will do us proud. We’ll form a Quality of Life Task Force and enforce codes more strictly, do a better job of cleaning our streets, and and get homeowners to keep up their homes.

 Redevelopment will take time to accomplish. So, the question becomes, in the short-term, where will the money come from to make these changes until redevelopment kicks in? 

The answer lies in fiscal responsibility and accountability.  And, that is something we can begin to make happen immediately.

We must do more with every scarce tax dollar. We will re-evaluate the value and necessity of every program every year and eliminate unnecessary spending.

Strong professional management will bring tighter budgets, and we are recruiting the best and the brightest to manage our departments and agencies.

We will limit expensive outsourcing that has cost the city hundreds of thousands of dollars..

And, we will aggressively seek public, foundation and private business grants. We will hire a top-notch grants officer to seek out and bring home new sources of funding and to enable us to use Orange as a laboratory and incubator for new and innovative programs.

Nowhere do we need new and innovative programs more than in our public schools. Although as mayor, I do not have direct control of our schools, I intend to work with and to shape the school administration and work with the PTA and the students to make our school system something to make us proud.

With a better school system, it will be easier to achieve our goals of reducing crime and redeveloping our blighted areas.

And, although we are a city of only 2.2 square miles, we must always remember that we are part of a global economy. Now that many jobs can be outsourced to other countries, our students and our adults must be educated to compete successfully with graduates in India, China, and Japan as well as graduates of other New Jersey school systems.

We will bring the expertise of businesses into our schools to teach our children about real jobs in the real world and to develop after school and summer internships.

We will more strongly emphasize math and the sciences, two critical areas in which our nation is falling behind.

And, last, but not least, we will partner with regional colleges and universities to offer lifetime learning for adults who wish to improve their job skills or train for a new career, and for senior citizens who want to enrich their lives.

That, in brief, is the ambitious agenda that, we the people of Orange have set for ourselves.

During the recent campaign, I never said that I was going to solve the problems of Orange all by myself. I made it very clear that it will take all of us working together to make a difference.

So, now, on Day One of our new administration, I don’t say to you: “Just watch what I can do in City Hall.”

Instead, I say, “Get involved in every way that you can. Together we will create new ways for you to participate in the building of a better and more prosperous Orange.”

And I say, “Come with me to City Hall, and, together, we’re going to turn our city around!”  The future is now!

 Thank you and God bless.