Smart Financial Incentives:

• Introduce new tax breaks, grants, and targeted financial incentives to attract new businesses and support local startups.

• Simplified Processes: Streamline city codes and expedite the permitting process to make it easier for businesses to start, expand, and thrive.

• Customer-Centric Inspections: Ensure city inspections are timely and business-friendly, supporting contractors and business owners with clear guidance and efficient service.

Celebrate Our Unique Identity

• Kool-Aid Capital: Embrace our heritage as the Kool-Aid Capital of the world.

• Highlight Our Colleges: Showcase Hastings’ outstanding educational institutions like Central Community College and Hastings College. Leverage homecoming weekends and other college events to boost local tourism and support our hospitality sector.

• Restoration Grants: Secure grants to restore and update historical landmarks like Chautauqua Park, Hartwell Park, and the Kensington Property, preserving our city’s rich history.

• Vibrant Downtown: Reimagine downtown Hastings with lively street parties, local performances, and inviting patio dining to create a bustling cultural hub.

Investing in Our Future

• New High School: To accommodate our growing population and safety needs, begin planning to construct a new high school within the next decade.

• Safe Streets for Students: Enhance safety measures around our elementary and middle schools. Propose a diagonal pedestrian bridge at 2nd and Marian Road, and expand bike paths to ensure safe routes to school.

Drive Development in Ward 4

• Expand North Commons: Build on the success in North Commons by exploring connections between 26th and 33rd Streets with a new roadway.

• Strategic Property Development: Encourage development in key areas like the 26th and Elm properties, and west of Crosier Monastery, considering potential soccer fields and other community amenities.

• Bike Path Expansion: Due to a lack of sidewalks, extend bike paths along Eastside Boulevard to 14th Street for pedestrian use.

• Eastside Boulevard Businesses: Eastside Boulevard from 6th to 2nd Street need a facelift and better street parking look for resources to aid in redevelopment.

• Repurpose Old Police Station: Advocate for the redevelopment of the old police station on 2nd and Eastside Boulevard once the superfund site is cleared.

• Park Safety: Heartwell Park has a need on the south side for speed bumps to aid with pedestrian and children safety.

• New Park in North Commons: Establish a new park in the North Commons area to support community growth and enhance quality of life.

Sustainability for the Future

• Brownfields Accountability: Hold the city accountable for monitoring sites that could pose future environmental risks and work with the EPA to secure funding for brownfield redevelopment.

• Groundwater Contamination Oversight: Request quarterly updates on the Second Street Subsite OU12 to ensure effective mitigation of groundwater contamination.

• Solar Farm Expansion: Prioritize funding to expand our current solar farm, increasing our renewable energy capacity and reducing reliance on fossil fuels.

• Coal Plant Transition: Preparing for the future by exploring cost-effective and sustainable alternatives to our Whelan Coal Energy Plant 1, aligning with EPA regulations, and reducing our carbon footprint by 90% by 2030 will be no easy task but essential.

Strengthening Our Connections

• Innovative City Communications: Collaborate with our city communications director, new city administrators, director of development services, and IT department to develop innovative ideas that resonate with our community.

• Empowering Community Experts: Enhance the role of community boards and local experts to ensure that diverse voices guide our city’s growth and development.

• Quarterly Ward Meeting: Listening to our citizens is key, and holding Ward meetings will support building trust and synergy for our community.

Ensuring Effective Use of City Resources

• A Focus on Budgets and Personnel: As a community, we rely on our city workers to keep Hastings running smoothly—whether they’re maintaining our streets, responding to emergencies, or providing essential services that make our city a great place to live. It’s critical that we ensure our resources are being used effectively and that we’re not burdening our city with unnecessary administrative overhead.

• Prioritizing Frontline Services: When reviewing city budgets, we must prioritize funding for roles that directly impact the daily lives of our residents. This means focusing on frontline services—like public safety, sanitation, and infrastructure—rather than expanding administrative roles that may not directly contribute to the quality of life in our community.

• Avoiding Bloat: While administrative support is necessary to keep operations running smoothly, it's important to strike the right balance. We need to avoid creating an excess of desk jobs that do little more than add layers of bureaucracy. Our goal should be to ensure that every role within the city government adds value to the community.

• Smart Personnel Decisions: Every time a new position is proposed, we should ask: How does this role serve the community? If a position is not directly tied to improving services, enhancing safety, or supporting our city workers, it’s worth questioning whether it’s truly needed.

• Empowering Our Workers: It’s essential that we empower our city workers by giving them the tools, training, and support they need to do their jobs effectively. Investing in our workforce means better services for everyone in Hastings.