Common themes emerged during the speeches and promises offered during the ceremony at the East Somerville Community School Monday night marking the inauguration of Mayor Joe Curtatone for an unprecedented sixth term and the swearing-in of members on both the Board of Alderman and School Committee.

Politics is politics, so there will always be the same buzzwords in such speeches, regardless to which particular board, committee or position the person behind the lectern has been elected. Hope and teamwork, progress and learning from the past aren’t necessarily anything new when reassuring voters that majority rule ruled the right way at the polls.

Even a political cynic, though, could pick up on the Somervilleness (let’s pretend it’s a word) of Monday’s speeches. The city that was once home to immigrants is still home to immigrants looking to equally assimilate and add to the culture they have joined. The city that seemed perhaps like an afterthought of urban “planning,” the city that was a place to put factories and industries when there was nowhere else for them to go and the city that served as a way to get from “A” to “B” without ever being considered either “A” or “B,” has become something very different in the past 10 or 15 years – nevermind the past 50 or 100.

The challenge now, when one listened to the commonality of references and visions Monday, is to take the city’s internal (and collective) perception of itself and bring that outside for all to see. That will take time, planning, consensus and, of course, money. All, obviously, easier said than done.

Contradictions and tensions exist even when there seems an apparent agreement on the overarching opinion of where the city should go and how it should change in the very-near and not-so-very-near future. Yes, everyone wants Somerville to be affordable, but people want it to also be innovative and eye-catching, forward moving and fabulous.

Making it “hip,” however, begs the question: hip to whom? And making it affordable begs the question: affordable at what cost? Stuck between the two “Gs” of “ghetto” and “gentrification,” the city and its leaders are, as many speeches noted Monday, at a crossroads.

While the decisions they face are not easy ones, at least the initial sense of agreement expressed during the first few days of this new year offers some hope that some sort of answers are out there.

We elect our leaders to lead. And while we will hold them to their words now that they’ve been sworn in, we also hope they will listen to ours.