Mayor Leirion Gaylor Baird delivered her State of the City speech on the morning of October 4th. In it, she discussed the challenges the city faced during the pandemic but also how the capital has managed to pull itself out of the worldwide misery.
“While many cities across the country are struggling to bounce back from the pandemic, financial experts are taking note of Lincoln’s strong economic recovery,” said Mayor Gaylor Baird. The mayor then referenced a study done by finance website Wallet Hub, which determined that Lincoln led the nation in unemployment recovery from 2019 to 2021.
“They also compared 150 of the most populated cities across six key categories: financial stability, education, health, safety, economy and infrastructure, and pollution, in order to determine the best-run cities in America. And out of those 150 cities they looked at, Lincoln ranked number six.”
Mayor Gaylor Baird also declared public safety to be the number one priority of her administration and, while praising the efforts of Lincoln Fire and Rescue and the Lincoln Police Department, detailed new investments into the forces.
The mayor continued to tout Lincoln’s historic levels of residential construction and said that 2022 is on pace to surpass 2021’s records.
“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.”
Additional topics that were covered included several new projects Lincoln can look forward to, including a downtown music district dedicated to live performances, an aim to eliminated traffic-related deaths and severe injures, and plans to build permanent supportive housing to help with the city’s chronic homelessness.
The full speech is available to view on YouTube, and the city posted the full text of the speech online.