State of the City 2024
Mayor Leirion Gaylor Baird
October 8, 2024
Good morning, everyone!
It's so wonderful to be back here with the members and supporters of Leadership Lincoln. Thank you for all you do to cultivate leadership in our community and thank you for once again hosting my State of the City address.
On nights when the stars on our schedules align, my husband, Scott, and I like to take a walk together after dinner. Well, we like the idea of taking a walk together; in reality, those walks look more like me flinging open the front door and setting off at a brisk pace, only to turn around moments later to discover Scott strolling happily a block behind. To encourage us to stay apace, we bought a special mitten that helps us venture out hand in hand – it's called a “Smitten”!.... On our walks, we often pass this house, located just 6 blocks from ours. And this school. And as I worked on this year's State of the City address, I realized, we were walking in the footsteps of a giant.
And it isn't just me and my unhurried husband.... Everyone in this room walks in the footsteps of a giant. In fact, everyone who serves our community – and that includes a lot of folks who aren't in this room this morning because they are out serving Lincoln right now – they also walk in the footsteps of a giant.
Spoiler alert: The giant I'm talking about is not John F. Kennedy, whose inaugural address inspired countless Americans to answer the call to serve their neighbors and their country. We all know these words, “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.”
What's less well known about these words and that iconic speech is this: a boy who grew up right here in Lincoln helped create them. A boy who lived in that home close to mine. A boy who, like some of you, attended Sheridan Elementary and graduated from Lincoln High. Go, Links! A boy who, as an adult, carried his Lincoln, Nebraska sensibilities all the way to the White House...and grew into the legendary giant in whose footsteps we follow.
That giant's name? Ted Sorensen, who became President Kennedy's longtime adviser and speechwriter. Ted Sorensen never took credit for his boss's words – when asked directly, he simply replied, “Ask not.” But he was more than willing to credit his Lincoln roots. In his memoir, Ted wrote: “I always cherished the city of my birth – the safe, peaceful, predictable environment that nurtured my childhood and laid the foundation of my life and career.”
The Lincoln of Ted Sorensen's youth looks a little different now, the pace is a bit faster, but the foundation that nurtured and inspired him remains. That foundation continues to nurture and inspire me and countless other Lincolnites to follow in his footsteps...because Ted's spirit of service – immortalized by those iconic lines that ask us to “Ask Not” – that's our spirit of service, too.
It's the spirit of community members like Kris Reiswig. When the maple trees lining her street began to decline, Kris put on her official Master Gardener badge and went door-to-door to present her neighbors with a menu of replacement trees supplied by our Parks and Recreation team. And every single one of Kris's neighbors participated and together they planted 30 street trees in one day. Kris, thank you for your spirit of service and for being here this morning.
It's the spirit of community members like Abdul Alkoutaini. When Abdul fled war-torn Syria to resettle in Lincoln a few years ago, a caseworker with Catholic Social Services greeted Abdul and his family with these words: “Welcome Home.” Today, a caseworker himself, Abdul is the one who greets refugees with a warm “Welcome Home.” Abdul, thank you for your spirit of service and thank you for tuning in virtually this morning.
It's the spirit of community members like these children who show that you don't have to be a certain age to “Ask Not”. With the help of the Autism Family Network, they squeezed lots of lemons this summer, making lemonade and something else pretty sweet: $3,500 dollars to support our City's first fully-inclusive playground at Mahoney Park.
Like these incredible individuals who “Ask Not”, my team at City Hall exemplifies a spirit of service. Those who suit up every day to work for the City are one of reasons why Lincoln has remained that safe and peaceful environment of Ted Sorensen's youth.
I am particularly grateful for the service of our Lincoln City Council. Councilmembers, will you please stand and be recognized for your leadership?
I also appreciate our partners on the Lancaster County Board, our Lincoln state senators, the members of our Airport Authority, Natural Resources District, and Lincoln Public Schools boards, and the five-hundred-and-eleven volunteers who serve on our 58 City boards and commissions…. I'm especially grateful to my dedicated and talented Cabinet of City Department Directors. Directors, will you please stand up so we can thank you for your service to our community?
There's someone else whose unwavering spirit of service deserves special mention this morning. Her service saved lives during one of the most challenging periods in our city's history. To our retiring Lincoln-Lancaster County Health Department Director Pat Lopez, who is joining us virtually this morning, thank you for the truly inspiring example you set of a kind, fearless, and strong leader and thank you for the decades you have spent dedicated to protecting the health and safety of our community members.
And here's more to applaud – that safe and peaceful foundation of Ted Sorensen's youth today owns these bragging rights:
the 14th best city for outdoor recreation;
the 6th best state capital;
one of the best places in America to retire;
the #1 top city for renters;
the top 5 for cleanest air in America – the only city in the Midwest to make the list!
the 4th best mid-sized city for Gen Z;
And, for the third year in a row, we are the 6th best-run city in America!
Well these honors didn't just appear out of thin air, or our wonderfully clean air.... We earned them through the City team's hard work to create a more successful, secure, and shared future; through public-private partnerships that we've forged together; and through the inspired service of community members who “Ask Not”. Yes, the state of our city is indeed strong. And while we are so proud of our strength, we continue to build on our successes every day as we cultivate Lincoln to become the quality-of-life capital of the country.
This morning, let's take a look at what my administration, together with our community, has achieved over the past year to make Lincoln even more safe, healthy, strong, resilient, equitable, and inclusive, with a vibrant economy and quality of life.
We are a safe and healthy city because public safety is our top priority. We continue to invest in partnerships, training, equipment, and facilities to make Lincoln the safest and healthiest capital city in America.
In June, we opened the doors to our new Emergency Communications Center. We equipped this new, larger Center with the latest technology to support the excellent service of our dedicated dispatchers and to ensure that, when you call 911, you get the help you need within minutes.
Well sometimes that help doesn't look like a fire truck or a police car. To provide more targeted emergency assistance for community members in immediate need of mental health support, the City developed a partnership with the State to rapidly redirect calls to the 9-8-8 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, making Lincoln the first city in Nebraska to do so.
Another recent public safety innovation is our Alternate Response Program. Since we launched this program just over a year ago, our dispatchers and officers have successfully diverted over 12-hundred calls involving unsheltered individuals to CenterPointe's Street Outreach Team, who, in turn, has helped over 25 people become housed. By redirecting these calls to trained social workers, we better meet the human services needs of people experiencing homelessness; we provide our officers more time for other calls that require law enforcement; and we save taxpayer dollars by reducing the need for costly emergency services.
Our commitment to public safety is paying dividends. Today, I'm pleased to share that LPD is nearly fully staffed at 94% of its authorized strength! This includes the 18 recruits in our current academy, one of the largest classes in the past decade. Thanks in large part to the work of our dedicated officers, Part 1 crime, which includes violent crime, is at a twenty-five-year low, and we are solving these cases with the highest clearance rate since 2010.
Together with LPD, our team at Lincoln Fire and Rescue forms the cornerstone of our public safety response. As our LFR team grows to keep pace with the growth of our city, we continue to invest in the new tools that are already saving lives, including new extrication equipment and this new, 1 million dollar ladder truck.
Here's a powerful demonstration of how our community members' spirit of service also supports our community's health and safety, too: in 2023, Lincolnites performed bystander CPR in 75% of non-traumatic cardiac arrest cases, that's nearly double the national average of 40%. Cheers to you!
Our City is also ahead of the curve in protecting and promoting public health. Through my administration's Lead Safe Lincoln initiative, our Health, Urban Development, and Transportation and Utilities teams collaborate to proactively prevent lead exposure and keep children and families safe and healthy.
With significant support from the Biden-Harris Administration's Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, we began replacing privately-owned lead water service lines with new, safe ones at no cost to homeowners like Woods Park neighborhood resident Lisa Thompson. And as we make progress toward our goal to replace every private lead service line in Lincoln by the year 2035, we uphold our commitment to supply safe, healthy drinking water for everyone in our community.
And in our desire to make Lincoln the safest and healthiest capital city in America, we even make house calls! Through our new Family Connects program, our Health team provides families with newborns free, voluntary home visits from public health nurses. Since we launched Family Connects last September, our nurses have served over 700 families in Lincoln and Lancaster County, helping ensure that our community's children enjoy the healthiest start possible.
As we work to fortify the health and safety of our community, we also focus on fortifying our literal foundations – the infrastructure that accelerates Lincoln's growth and resilience. Here's how we are building a strong and resilient city.
Well-maintained streets enhance public safety, support economic development, and they grow the great life across our community, and my administration is investing in streets at record levels. Through our City's $47 million dollar investment in street infrastructure this past year, we constructed nearly 18 lane miles of new or resurfaced arterial streets and made nearly 8 lane miles of improvements to residential streets.
We do this street work with strong support from our community. In the spirit of “Ask Not”, Lincoln voters in 2019 approved a six-year local sales tax that funds our highly successful Lincoln on the Move initiative, which is making our streets – and our quality of life –better.
Since the Lincoln on the Move sales tax took effect, we have completed 50 additional street construction and improvement projects and invested nearly 78 million additional dollars into our streets, making it easier, safer, and smoother for people to drive to get to work, for children to get to school, and for customers to support our local businesses.
As we build even better, stronger infrastructure, we consider our changing climate. Through implementation of Lincoln's Climate Action Plan, we aim to increase our resilience to extreme weather events, bolster our sustainability, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Together with our partners at Lincoln Electric System, we launched a pilot program in January to provide financial incentives to homeowners who install energy-efficient heat pumps. Heat pumps clean our air, improve our health, and they save money by reducing utility costs. So far, over 325 homeowners have taken advantage of this incentive!
To build on this initial success, we kicked off a second round of incentives last week, and I encourage eligible community members to take advantage of this opportunity!
Councilmember Bennie Shobe led the establishment of the heat pump program, having successfully proposed funding for it in the past two City budgets. Councilmember Shobe, thank you for your leadership!
As we strive to be strong and resilient, we take stock of our changing climate's local impacts. In our neck of the woods, those impacts often look like water: too little of it, or too much. And for over 40 years, stormwater bonds have helped protect Lincoln's property and people from floods, and they've promoted our community's growth. Ahead of the upcoming election on November 5th, when you will see a local stormwater bond on the ballot, I encourage everyone to learn more about how these proposed stormwater infrastructure investments are designed to help protect homes and businesses from flood damage, reduce pollution, and increase water quality. You can learn more on the City website at lincoln.ne.gov.
Our investments in a strong and resilient Lincoln demonstrate our commitment to building a strong and resilient future. We know that that future is brighter when everyone can meaningfully contribute to it, which is why we focus on City services and investments that make Lincoln an even more equitable and inclusive city.
Essential to creating an even more equitable and inclusive city is preserving and growing the supply of high-quality, affordable housing. Here's a glimpse of key affordable housing projects that my administration has supported over the past year.
The City of Lincoln invested $3.74 million dollars to support the Foxtail Meadows development, which has created nearly 170 new units of affordable housing and ultimately will construct a total of 600 mixed-income homes.
Our current work with developers to support the creation of new affordable housing will yield 300 more units through projects underway at Center Terrace, Central at South Haymarket, and Promenade at Pioneers.
At City Hall, we understand that increasing the supply of housing at every price point helps make housing overall more affordable, which is why our City team has worked diligently to issue more residential building permits during the past three years than have been issued during any other three-year period on record!
To preserve and improve Lincoln's existing affordable housing stock, we continued the City's Residential Rental Rehabilitation program with our partners at NeighborWorks Lincoln, LES, and Black Hills Energy. Over the past year, we have worked with landlords and property owners to maintain affordable rents and improve 106 units by funding upgrades like energy efficient doors and windows, new insulation, and roofing and foundation repairs. Today, I am thrilled to announce we're launching the second round of our Residential Rental Rehab program that will improve 108 units in the upcoming year!
These efforts are part of my administration's larger goal to create 5,000 new or rehabilitated affordable housing units by 2030. And I am pleased to announce today that, having incentivized 2,641 affordable housing units so far, we are ahead of schedule and more than half-way toward meeting our ambitious goal!
To make Lincoln even more equitable and inclusive, we prioritize eliminating health disparities. We partner with the Cultural Centers of Lincoln and, over the past year, we've empowered more than 56 hundred community members from racial and ethnic minority groups to access vital behavioral healthcare and take proactive steps in managing and preventing chronic diseases. Through our public Dental Clinic, we provided over 12,000 dental appointments to low-income children, adults, pregnant women, and refugees.
We also foster an equitable and inclusive city with free access to information and the internet through our public libraries. The demand for our libraries' resources is clear. This past year, we issued over 17,000 new library cards – that's 13% more than the previous year – and many cards now feature the artwork of Ellie Little, who won our first-ever Library Card Design Contest for Teens.
As we provide access for all to library resources that grow strong minds, we likewise deliver access for all to recreational opportunities that grow strong bodies. To serve children and families of all physical abilities, our team at Parks and Recreation built a new ADA-accessible walking trail and playground at Easterday Rec Center. And I'm pleased to announce that we will break ground this month on our City's first fully-inclusive playground at Mahoney Park!
When our city works for everyone, everyone can work to make our city prosper. That's why our team builds partnerships across the community to create an even more vibrant economy and quality of life.
The most solid foundation of a vibrant economy is a good job. Which is why my administration has made investments in workforce development that help our residents attain meaningful, financially secure careers and help local employers access the talent they need to compete.
Our investments using American Rescue Plan funds have now served over 1,300 Lincoln residents, resulting in increased wages for many and empowering these workers to gain new skills and new jobs in high-demand fields like manufacturing, trucking, welding, I.T., the health sciences, and early childhood education.
And to grow our childcare workforce, this spring we allocated $200-thousand dollars to Lincoln Littles and Cedars – and extended a successful Community Action program to credential more early childhood educators.
Through our American Job Center, we partnered with local businesses to upskill nearly 200 local workers to help them fill positions or achieve promotions in their current workplaces, while helping local employers retain their valued employees.
To grow a vibrant local economy, the City approved $21.9 million dollars in Tax Increment Financing to drive over $183 million dollars in private investment. And here are just a few of the development projects we are supporting with public financial incentives and infrastructure:
Kinney Manufacturing District, that will expand and anchor a future industrial area in northeast Lincoln;
The Shops at Lincoln, that will add 25 new jobs and transform the former Sears building into multiple retail stores;
Instinct Pet Foods' expansion that has added 17 new jobs;
Speedway Properties' development at 48th and Madison Avenue that will combine retail space with both market rate and affordable apartments;
The 23rd Street Net Zero Ready Project, that will combine new affordable housing, rooftop solar, and small commercial spaces for budding entrepreneurs; and
And Epworth Church's adaptive re-use as new apartments and a childcare center.
As we facilitate growth and development, it's worth noting that, in the most recent fiscal year, the City issued over thirty-two thousand building permits!
To further support a vibrant economy and quality of life, we're helping build Lincoln's premier baseball and softball fields at the Sandhills Global Youth Complex. Local government contributed over half the total funding for this catalyst project. And I want to thank our private sector, and philanthropic, and higher education partners, with special gratitude to Lincoln City Council Chair Sändra Washington for her leadership role in this project.
As our city grows, we are committed to ensuring that our parks system grows, too. Parks are fundamental to Lincoln's quality of life. And I am pleased to formally announce that our Parks and Rec team opened two new parks in north Lincoln, Prairie Village and Tranquility, that together serve over 16-hundred households and advance our goal to ensure that everyone in Lincoln lives within a 10-minute walk of a public park.
And another new park is on the way! With the support of public and private sector partners, the City acquired land that will become Cornhusker Bank Park, a 154-acre gem that will soon sparkle at the northwest edge of Lincoln.
As we grow the great life for all, we remain committed to doing so in innovative and operationally excellent ways.
And here's a great example: where others see parking lots, we see opportunities for innovation! Last February, Lincoln became the first city in Nebraska to eliminate minimum parking requirements, freeing up valuable land for further development that supports economic growth. With input from our Planning team, Councilmember Tom Beckius led this important innovation. Thank you for your leadership, Councilmember Beckius.
Together, we have generated a lot of forward momentum in Lincoln. And though the world today looks a lot different from the one that Ted Sorensen and JFK inhabited, service to something greater than oneself remains essential to maintaining our momentum and achieving great things.
For, as JFK acknowledged in his 1962 “We choose to go to the moon” speech, achieving great things requires great commitment.
Here in Lincoln, we too choose to undertake challenges, not because they are easy, but because they are hard. As Lincolnites, we believe in reaching for the stars. Earlier this year, the City of Lincoln launched our new brand, in the shape of a star, a unifying symbol of the high aspirations and expectations that we at City Hall have of ourselves – and that our community members have of us.
Those aspirations led us to develop my administration's “moonshot” projects in the form of 13 priority pillars, which I unveiled at last year's State of the City address. Here's a look at our progress on many of these pillars that are making Lincoln the safest and healthiest capital city in America, growing the great life, and creating an even more dynamic downtown:
Our innovative Co-Responder Program will enable LPD and mental health professionals from Center Pointe to respond jointly to calls for service involving people experiencing mental health crises. We just signed the contract to set co-response in motion, and we look forward to having these mental health professionals on board in the next six months.
We made huge strides toward functionally ending chronic homelessness when our Urban Development team selected the architect, the operator, and the contractor to create Lincoln's first City-owned permanent supportive housing. Today, I am thrilled to share that we will break ground on this innovative project later this month!
Streets continue to be a priority pillar. And over the next two fiscal years, we will invest over $87 million dollars in street infrastructure that supports hundreds of millions of dollars in private investment all across our city. Our public street investment includes $49.9 million dollars in year one and $37.5 million dollars in year two. That lower number in year two -- that reflects the expiration next September of the highly successful Lincoln on the Move initiative, funded by that voter-approved local sales tax for streets. In the months to come, we look forward to engaging with our community about the benefits of Lincoln on the Move, and how we can capitalize on them moving forward.
As part of our Water 2.0 project to secure a second water source for our community, I'm pleased to announce we have identified potential sites on the Missouri River for our new wellfield and water treatment facility, we've completed environmental testing on those sites, and in the next year we will work to select and secure the ultimate site. We recently hired the contractors who will begin construction next spring on a new, 60-inch transmission main that will connect water, eventually, from the Missouri River to Lincoln. That's a big deal.
To enhance our public transportation infrastructure, we made progress on another priority pillar project: our Multi-modal Transportation Center. As part of our efforts to develop this Center, we engaged community members through surveys, open houses, and even door-to-door outreach, and we completed the initial design.
As we place priority on ensuring a high quality of life for our seniors, Lincoln became an official AARP Age-Friendly Community! To build on this momentum, our Aging Partners team hosted a series of community listening sessions, and they recently kicked off Digital Literacy Workshops to help seniors more effectively and enjoyably use technology like iPads and cellphones.
As part of our workforce priority pillar, my administration initially invested $400,000 dollars in American Rescue Plan funds to credential approximately 40 community members with commercial driver's licenses. Well, we are on track to meet that initial goal, as 43 residents have entered the credentialing program, and 17 have already earned their commercial driver's licenses! This includes Christopher Aunquoe, who, after years of homelessness and incarceration, is now making $1,500 dollars per week as a truck driver. Successes like Christopher's are why we allocated an additional $250,000 dollars to credential another 25 people.
Our Downtown Corridors pillar project will enhance the attractiveness, safety, and overall vibrancy of key sections of 9th, 10th, and "O" Streets. We got a boost when Congressman Mike Flood secured $4 million dollars in federal funding to support its development. This morning, I'm thrilled to share that we will begin construction on the Downtown Corridors next spring.
Our Music District project will capitalize on Lincoln's live local music scene. Together with community stakeholders and our partners at the Downtown Lincoln Association, we're working on our next big hit: the Music Box, a destination performance venue at 14th and N Streets, where artists, musicians, and the public can convene, create, and collaborate. I'm ecstatic to announce that construction of the Music Box is well underway, and we hope you'll join us when the first musician plays there early next year.
To literally grow the great life, we increased the footprint of South Haymarket Park by over 2 acres. With extra green space for this priority pillar project, we will add a hearth, a community pavilion, and a new, central location for what will become Nebraska's premier in-ground skatepark. We launched a capital campaign for the park last year, and I'm overjoyed to share that since then we have raised over $7 million dollars! Remember, no donation is too large or too small if you too would like to help build this park!
All these examples of how we are cultivating the quality-of-life capital of the country are precisely what Ted Sorensen intended to inspire his generation to do: to reach for the moon and for the stars...to spark our collective imagination about what we can achieve when we embrace a higher purpose – when we “Ask Not”.
As we stand today, united by a symbol of our high expectations and on that ever “safe and peaceful” foundation that launched Ted Sorensen, let's think about our own “moonshot projects” – the acts that will leave our footprints on our beloved community.
To all of you sitting in the room, to the five people watching online, to everyone in Lincoln, I ask: what stars will you reach for on behalf of our community?
Because, in order to maintain the solid foundation that Ted Sorensen so appreciated, we have childhoods to nurture, homes to build, streets to pave, parks to develop, jobs to create, elections to vote in, and wells to dig. To ensure our great city remains safe, healthy, strong, resilient, equitable, inclusive, with a vibrant economy and quality of life, we must reach out – to each other, to our neighbors, to those we know and those we don't yet know – we must be involved in our civic life. Because when we walk hand in hand...when we “ask not what our community can do for us, but what we can do for our community,” we don't just reach for the stars, we walk among them.