Kim Driscoll: 'Together We Have Changed Salem For The Better'

SALEM, MA — On the eve of her inauguration as the state's next lieutenant governor, Kim Driscoll took one last chance to address the Salem City Council as the mayor of what she called her "forever hometown."

Driscoll resigned her post as the city's first woman mayor after 17 years to join Gov.-elect Maura Healey as the first all-women state executive leadership team in history upon winning a crowded election in November. Driscoll will be inaugurated at a ceremony at the State House with a TD Garden party to follow on Thursday.

"This is truly a bittersweet moment for me," she said on Wednesday. "While I'm thrilled by the new challenges and opportunities ahead, I'm leaving a job I love, and have loved, every single day that I've been honored to serve you."

She touted the transition the Witch City has experienced under her administration from a city she said was "marked by a coal-fired power plant for generations" and where "public access and connections to our harbor ... were virtually non-existent" to one where that is a "vibrant, thriving community, the hub of the North Shore and, in so many respects, the envy of many Massachusetts communities."

She cited the city's professionalizing of municipal government, rebuilding of its finances, prioritization of transparency, encouragement of more voices and engagement of residents as strides many over the better part of the past two decades.

"This team of leaders who have championed Salem alongside me all these years," Driscoll said, "you've done the work and you own our city's successes as much as I do.

"Together we have changed Salem for the better."

Three-time City Council President Robert McCarthy was chosen by his Council peers to serve as acting mayor through the certification of the May 16 special election to fill Driscoll's seat through the remainder of what would have been her fifth full term.

The Salem State alumna noted her upbringing as a "Navy brat" that moved from town to town every two to three years and thanked the residents for providing her with a "forever home" as she prepares to go to work in the State House.

"I'm so deeply grateful for the opportunity I’ve had over these last 17 years, to help shape, improve, and lead my hometown — this amazing community of Salem," she said. "And I'm so grateful for the support, collaboration, and friendship of so many of you in making that opportunity happen.

"When I announced my first candidacy for mayor in 2005, I said that Salem deserved a city government as dedicated, optimistic, and forward-looking as the people it serves. I believe that we've achieved that vision and that the state of our city is as strong as its future.

"And I'm incredibly thankful for all of you who joined me in making that possible."

(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)