City of Lincoln, NE

10/04/2022 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 10/04/2022 10:26

Mayor Promotes Progress Toward a Successful, Secure, Shared Future

Mayor Promotes Progress Toward a Successful, Secure, Shared Future

Published on October 04, 2022

Gaylor Baird highlights strength of community in State of the City Address

During the 2022 State of the City Address delivered at a Leadership Lincoln event at the Graduate Hotel, Mayor Leirion Gaylor Baird today discussed her administration's accomplishments and efforts to ensure Lincoln supports the security, strength and well-being of all residents.

Mayor Gaylor Baird highlighted the strength of Lincoln's pandemic recovery by crediting community-wide commitments to public health, strong public safety and infrastructure investments, and durable partnerships between public and private sector leaders with delivering record-setting growth.

"As we move Lincoln forward, we step up to the plate with our private sector partners to launch game-changing, catalyst projects that grow economic opportunity and our quality of life," Mayor Gaylor Baird said.

She noted that since taking office, her administration has added nearly 60 public safety positions to the Lincoln Police Department and Lincoln Fire and Rescue, including officers, firefighters, 911 dispatchers and civilian personnel. Those investments are helping LPD reduce violent crime, felonies, misdemeanors, traffic accidents, and traffic injuries in 2022 relative to the previous five-year average.

"Part of what makes the state of our city so strong is the safety and security we enjoy here. That is why public safety is my administration's number one priority," Gaylor Baird said.

Mayor Gaylor Baird pointed to Lincoln's historic levels of residential construction, citing the largest number of housing construction permits last year and this year to date than any other two-year period since the 1970s. She also noted progress on affordable housing.

"We are well ahead of schedule to meet my administration's ambitious goal to create 5,000 new or rehabilitated affordable housing units by 2030," Gaylor Baird said. "In just two years, we have incentivized the creation of over 1,200 new or rehabilitated units."

The mayor highlighted progress made thanks to the voter-approved Lincoln on the Move initiative that has been paving the way for new road construction and improvements to existing streets since 2019.

"This initiative has supplemented our regular budget for streets by nearly $42 million so far, and it will invest millions more over the course of its six-year duration, helping us to ensure Lincoln is a city that aligns mobility, safety, growth, and economic opportunity," she said.

Mayor Gaylor Baird announced several new City projects at the event. They include:

  • Allocation of $4.2 million in federal relief funds to build a 24-room permanent supportive housing facility to help alleviate chronic homelessness in Lincoln.
  • A rental rehabilitation program in the South of Downtown Neighborhood that aims to improve 100 older dwellings and maintain affordable rental rates in this historic part of town.
  • The "Safe Streets Lincoln - A Vision Zero Project," which aims to eliminate traffic-related deaths and severe injuries in Lincoln. The project's intermediate goal is to reduce these incidents by 60% by 2045 among the city's drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians.
  • A Downtown Music District Project to create a district focused on Lincoln's live music scene, and establishment of a Music District Advisory Committee to support development of a flourishing local music ecosystem that fuels job creation, talent retention and attraction, entrepreneurialism, broader economic growth, and tourism.

The State of the City Address will be re-aired at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, October 4 on LNKTV, the City government access channel available on Allo channel 2 and Spectrum channel 1300. The address is also available on demand at YouTube.com/LNKTVcity and through the LNKTV apps on Roku, Apple TV, and Amazon Fire TV.

For more information on Leadership Lincoln, visit leadershiplincoln.org.