 Hi, my name is Daryl Hofflin. I'm Sheboygan City Administrator, and I would like to present to you the 2019 State of the City address. The presentation will identify 2018 achievements and plan goals for 2018. Both the achievement and goals are linked to the city's 2017 to 2021 strategic plan. The foundation for the strategic plan is the city's mission statement. The mission statement is as follows. The city of Sheboygan is dedicated to providing residents, the business community, and visitors with a fiscally responsible municipal services in an effective and responsive manner to meet the needs of our diverse community. The 2017 and 2021 strategic plan also includes a vision statement. The city of Sheboygan will be a family-oriented and prosperous community with a wide variety of housing, business, cultural, and recreational opportunities in safe and attractive neighborhoods. The Common Council, which approved this strategic plan in 2016, identified six focus areas. They are the quality of life, infrastructure and public facilities, neighborhood development, neighborhood revitalization, governing and fiscal management, and last communication. The first focus area is quality of life. The goal of the focus area is providing a safe and secure community investing in recreation, library, open space, maximizing the natural environment, delivering transportation choices, elevating culture, arts, and education, ensuring sustainable and environmentally responsible solutions. The first focus area, achievements in 2018 include shoreline metro reaching an agreement with Sheboygan area school district to provide free student ridership. As a result, the ridership increased by 13 percent over 2017 levels, which was the highest in 16 years. Sheboygan for all livability initiative was kicked off with the goal of developing a action plan for 2019. Zero fire deaths or serious injuries to citizens or fire department personnel were experienced. Deliverable $1 million replacement ladder truck to ensure proper fire department response to fire and rescue events. In 2018 property crimes in Sheboygan continued to experience a decline. Over the past five years, crime has decreased by 35 percent. The goal for 2019 is to maintain or continue to reduce property crimes. In 2018, Sheboygan experienced violent crime levels consistent with similar levels experienced during the past five years. As part of a comprehensive community policing strategy, the police department has a comprehensive community outreach program. In 2018, over 283 outreach events were held. The second focus area is infrastructure and public facilities. The goal is improving the quality of life by effectively developing, maintaining and improving infrastructure, natural resources and community services. In 2018, the city resurfaced or reconstructed 7.2 miles of streets. It's a 308 percent increase over 2004 activity levels. Plan 2019 public works projects include reconstruct Pennsylvania Avenue Bridge, improvements to Superior Avenue and North Avenue. In 2017, the Director of Public Works developed a 14-year plan for transportation improvement management. Every two years, all Wisconsin municipalities are required to rate their community's pavement. The Sheboygan pavement rating increased by 5 percent from 2015 to 2017. In light of significant street repair work performed in 2018, the 2019 rating is expected to improve further. In late 2018, the city commenced with a $10.5 million renovation of the 102-year-old City Hall. The completion of this project is forecasted for June 2019. In late fall 2018, the Shaw Family Playground opened in Evergreen Park. Other infrastructure or public facility improvements, which are planned for 2019 include complete Fire Station 1 repair and renovations, identify the site for a future Fire Department training facility to replace the existing tower at Fire Station 3, place into Shoreline Metrols Fleet five new buses to replace 14-year-old vehicles. All existing buses and new buses will be equipped with GPS tracking to allow riders to track their bus location. Order replacement garbage and recycling trucks and consider the elimination of a bag system and add a cart system for implementation in 2020. Install fiber optic cable from WSCS Studio to improve audio and visual quality of the signal for cable customers including airing of the city's common council meetings. In 2019, the city will renovate the plaza which surrounds Meet Public Library, create a more direct route between 8th Avenue, 8th Street, and the main library door entrance, and increase pedestrian safety for those who enter the library's parking lot. The third focus area is economic development. This goal is actively pursuing economic and business development strategies to support a growing and sustainable economic base, ensuring the fiscal financial resources needed to improve the quality of life, fund services, and provide a diversity of job opportunities for city residents. In 2018, the parking utility obtained approval to raise parking permits and parking meter rates to help sustain the maintenance of downtown public parking lots and street parking spaces. Finalized development agreement with the developer of Badgers State Law Offices Department, a $31 million historic renovation of the former tannery property which is a block north of Indiana Avenue. Also in 2018, two additional apartment projects were initiated, seven Penn and the Luxe. In Sheboygan, prices of homes sold continue to be strong. Over the past two years, the Wisconsin Department of Revenue collected information for 2016 and 2017. This information supports that the city experienced significantly higher property sale prices. In 2016, overall prices increased on residential properties by 6% or $95 million. In 2017, overall residential properties value saw an increase 9% higher over the prior year or $142 million city-wide. The city anticipates similar increases in home sale prices occurring during last year's 2018 sales. In 2018, the city created Tiff District Number 17. The boundaries are 14th Street on the west, Lake Michigan on the east along the Indian Avenue corridor. Within Tiff District Number 17 is a planned innovation district which is advancing. In 2019, the city plans to acquire the former Union Pacific Railroad right away for a future trail. Also, Tiff Tiff Number 18 was created in 2018. It's a 160 acre business park known as South Point Enterprise Campus. It is now shovel ready. Please contact city officials if you have an interest in these parcels. A third TID was created in 2018. TID 19, a redevelopment area that includes condo development, water's edge and the redevelopment sites of the boat doctors and Harmony Bar. The city's redevelopment areas continue to gain developer's interest and increase in valuation. Over the past five years, the value of the city's TIDs have increased by 20%. The fourth focus area of the strategic plan is neighborhood revitalization. It is encouraging reinvestment in the city's housing stock, creating solid neighborhoods with strong leadership, ensuring quality new housing developments, creating new diverse and affordable options for all citizens. The city's promotion of neighbors getting to know neighbors, watching out for each other and caring about their neighborhood has been critical to the city's neighborhood revitalization effort. In 2013, the first neighborhood association was formed, the historic Gateway neighborhood. Since then, a total of nine neighborhood associations have been formed, with just three in calendar year 2018. In 2018, two rock the block collaborative rehabilitation efforts were held on the city's north and south sides. The city continues to be successful in obtaining federal grants to fund two neighborhood bead officers. The mission of the officers is to park their vehicles, walk their assigned neighborhoods, to become familiar and know their neighbors, also to participate in neighborhood meetings to improve mutual understanding of issues that are important to each. Other efforts by city department includes tree trimming and street light maintenance or additions. In addition to the neighborhood bead officers, the city employs two part-time property maintenance officers, whose goal is to improve the quality of older neighborhoods. Such activities include notification to property owners to remove yard trash, abandoned vehicles and weed notices. The officers also focus on buildings needing maintenance work or even demolition. The number of housing code violations continues to be a critical enforcement activity for the city to ensure safe, livable conditions for its housing tenants. In 2018, additional staff efforts focused on Swift, Sheridan, Erie Hill and Gateway. In 2018, South Calumet, River Bend, River Watch and South Lake will be the focus areas. The fifth focus area of the strategic plan is implementing innovative and responsible policies and business practices to effectively manage its fiscal and human resources and maintain a quality of life for our citizens. Over the past two years, the city has submitted its major financial documents to national associations for review and possible award consideration. The 2017 and 2018 budgets received recognition from the Government Finance Officers Association, one of 26 communities in Wisconsin. Also, the city submitted a comprehensive annual financial report. We were one of 30 cities in Wisconsin to receive this recognition. And finally, the popular annual financial report received an award in 2018. Sheboygan was one of six Wisconsin communities to receive this recognition. The city also received a Certificate of Distinction in Performance Management from the International City County Management Association for the second year in a row. Only four Wisconsin communities have received this award in 2018. The city implemented a live Transparency and Benchmark Center in 2018. Its valuable municipal benchmarking intelligence is to help city of Sheboygan leaders quickly compare its finances to similar communities to make a more informed and data-driven policy and budgetary decisions. Managing the city's fund balance is critical to the city's overall financial health, including Moody's Investors Services credit rating. The city's fiscal policy identifies that the city should maintain a minimum 25 percent of its fund balance as compared to its annual expenditure level of the city's largest fund, the general fund, which is its operating budget. The past five years, the fund balance as a percent has been as high as 60 percent. In 2018, the city decided to use five million of the fund balance to pay cash for almost half the city hall renovation project. As a result, the fund balance percent declined from 60 percent to 40 percent. The city's goal is to also maintain its debt level at no more than 60 percent of the state-allowed debt. At the end of 2018, the city had 44 million or 31 percent of its state-allowed debt. In 2018, the city bond rating by Moody's Investors Service was reaffirmed as a AA2, which is a strong municipal rating. The sixth focus area of the strategic plan is communication. The city continues to look for opportunities to improve and be proactive in its communication with its residents, businesses, and property owners. In 2018, created monthly community e-newsletters and asked for additional input from its residents via a community survey. Already in 2018, I've created a communication task force to review existing methods of communicating with the city employees and with our community. The goal is to enhance communication as well as transparency. The task force includes not only city officials, but community partners, such as Acuity, Johnsonville, Kohler Company, and Lakeland University. In addition to the city's websites, the city uses social media to share information with the public. From 2017 to 2018, the city experienced over 100 percent increase in its activity associated with Facebook, Twitter, Nextdoor, and Nexall. I want to thank you for allowing me time to share information with you about the city's successful activities in the state of the city address. The city has already undertaken many new and exciting initiatives in 2008-19. I really look forward to giving you an update in one year as the city's outlook continues to be very favorable.