Hard work, perseverance paying off in Spotswood

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iling cabinets, closets and desk drawers were being cleaned out in Spotswood’s municipal offices this weekend, but the tasks were not done by ambitious employees trying their hand at a little spring cleaning.

Instead, municipal employees were packing the contents of their offices for the long-awaited move to Spotswood’s new municipal building.

How long have they been waiting? Since August 1997, to be exact. That’s when the borough was told to evacuate the former municipal building because of severe structural damage.

In the two and a half years since the fateful news, Spotswood officials — Mayor Barry Zagnit and Business Administrator Wayne Hamilton locally and Assemblyman Sam Thompson and Sen. Joseph Azzolina (R-13) on the state level — have been working to build a new home for municipal government.

Through their efforts, and with the help of Gov. Christine Whitman, the borough was able to secure $1.5 million from the state to use toward the new building on Summerhill Road.

And now their efforts seemed to have paid off. But not just the efforts of the politicians and administration. Every municipal employee who spent the last two and a half years working out of temporary trailers on the site of the former municipal building and every court employee who had to travel to neighboring Helmetta for municipal court sessions contributed to the final reward — a new building.

While the move is not complete and workers still need to install the new police communications system, all involved should give themselves a pat on the back. Whether this day took two and a half years or two and a half decades, officials did it right and at less cost to the taxpayers than originally expected.