The Mayor of the City of Ithaca delivered his State of the City of Ithaca address. The speech aims at drawing attention to past accomplishments and future goals. Mayor Svante Myrick focused on nearly half a dozen key topics in his address. They included infrastructure, workforce development in the always popular housing climate in and around downtown. Myrick noted that he hopes to build on the accomplishments of 2019.

Myrick started 2020 being sworn in. Starting his new term, he spoke about the past, present and future of the City. He delivered his State of the City of Ithaca address. Myrick touched on a number of accomplishments like helping a local grocery store expand.

“We delivered loan assistance to Greenstar so they create 24 new living wage jobs at their new location.” said Myrick.

But the future of the city is what mayor Myrick spent most of his time on. He focused on five key area's he hopes to focus on including a green new deal, public safety, housing, infrastructure and employee development.

“We need to build more hosing, build more affordable housing and we need to lower the tax rate.” said Myrick.

Last year 330 new apartments were built, with over 100 being considered affordable housing. Myrick also touched on building infrastructure. Looking at the number of road construction projects he even surprised himself with how much work was done.

“If you told me we were going to do 5,500 liner feet of sidewalk in the city in a given year i would not have believed it. but we're going to do it again next year.” said Myrick.

Myrick said the plan for infrastructure in 2020 is to work on a dozen other streets like College avenue.

A major emphasis in Myrick's address was city employee concerns and ways to improve employees feelings about their work. Myrick and the city are planning to invest in their employees in a number of ways.

“Implementing a city plan for city facilities, the second is investing in technology that makes their lives easier, third is improving trust communications and the fourth is settling union contracts.” said Myrick.

The hope is that police union contract will get done by the end of 2020.

But in his address Myrick put Ithaca into perspective. He said Ithaca has the fastest growing economy in the state.