A Princeton City Hall staffer who has become a source for this blogger has informed me that the City Council has yet to decide how it intends to look for a new city manager.

I am about to offer some unsolicited advice on how to find a successor to Derek Borg, who resigned suddenly the other evening after the council called an emergency meeting to discuss the city manager’s status.

My advice is simple: Go big, members of the council and hire a top-flight executive search firm to find a candidate who is able to lead the city along its explosive growth path. 

Princeton’s growth continues to astonish many of us who have moved here in recent years. My wife and I planted our roots in Princeton in early 2019. The city’s census figures released the following year showed it nearly tripled in growth from the 2010 population.

The very last thing Princeton needs to run its municipal government machinery is a placeholder, an individual who is just there to await his or her retirement. The city’s next manager should have a clear vision on what the city needs and a plan that can enable the city to find its way into the future.

Borg did an adequate job during his era as city manager. However, he wasn’t educated in municipal management. He is a firefighter, serving as the city fire marshal and then fire chief before ascending to the manager’s job.

The next Princeton city manager, as far as I am concerned, should be educated in the field of municipal growth management. He or she should have high energy and a relentless desire to seek fresh ideas, new approaches. The next manager also, in my view, ought to deliver a stated commitment to helping this city develop an identity.

Allow me this bit of candor: Princeton is a work in progress. It has no municipal identity. A new city manager shouldn’t have to concoct an identity, but he or she should be able to question those who have been here a long time about what makes Princeton such a desirable community to live.

It is quite obvious that many thousands of people are coming here to raise families, earn their living and presumably call this place “home.”

The next city manager ought to be able to provide a reason for them to stay and for the city to progress into the future with confidence.