Mayor Joe Yochum has high hopes and big plans for 2017.
During his State of the City address, the first of his second term, Yochum touted many accomplishments made in 2016, including the long-awaited opening of the River Walk, the completion of the Kimmell Road extension project on the city's east side, the beginning of a $1.6 million paving project and even $50,000 spent to improve local youth sports facilities.
A new $2.6 million bond sale will buy a new fire truck, 15 new police cars and a whole host of new equipment for the city's Street Department, too, and the city inspector tore down 11 eyesore homes with money from the state's Hardest Hit Blight Elimination Fund.
And even more, the mayor said, are targeted for this year.
“Everybody really worked together as a team for the betterment of the city,” the mayor said to those who had collected in the audience at City Hall, 201 Vigo St.
But Yochum has sights set on something even bigger this year.
He announced plans to apply for one of the state's largest development awards, the Stellar Communities Grant, the same grant that has transformed Princeton's downtown with more than $18 million in improvements since 2012.
The Stellar Communities Designation Program looks to bolster Indiana's smaller communities through economic development projects, and Yochum said he'll travel to Indianapolis this week for the first of what are likely to be many meetings in making application.
And he's hoping, if the city is successful, it would ensure the construction of Riverfront Lofts, a 32-unit apartment complex on the banks of the Wabash River.
Local architect Andy Myszak and his development team, in cooperation with local non-profit INVin, learned last week they weren't successful in securing the federal tax credits needed to fund construction.
The Stellar grant, the mayor said, could be an alternative.
“Hopefully, that (project) can be put into the Stellar as our housing portion,” the mayor said.
But some simple house cleaning, too, is needed, he said, for the city to operate more efficiently.
He is officially moving the city's sanitation budget out of the General Fund and into its own line item, to be funded entirely through revenue taken in by the sale of trash stickers.
That was the intention, the mayor said, when the sticker was created long ago, but the department always needed to be subsidized by the General Fund.
But with fewer customers to take care of (Republic Services and other trash-collection businesses have taken over many of the city's former customers) the mayor said it's high time the trash collection system was self-sustaining.
But one shortfall that doesn't seem to be going away, he said, is that of the city fire department. This year — and for the last several years — the city has had to bolster the department by at least $300,000 to keep it in the black.
Even an attempt last year to raise the department's tax rate fell short.
The department can't expand into the Vincennes Township Fire Department's district, and what can be raised within its own is limited by property tax caps.
“This problem will not go away,” he said. “And the day will come when we can no longer fund it.”
The next step, the mayor said, will likely need to be the passing of a public safety Local Option Income Tax.
It won't be a popular or easy decision, he said, “but we cannot continue to be hundreds of thousands in the red at the end of the year.”
“And I can tell you, there is no place to cut in that budget,” he said, “not unless you cut manpower.”
The mayor will continue to pursue making changes to City Hall to make it more compliant with the federal Americans with Disabilities Act, and he plans to apply for more state dollars to do more paving next spring.
If the General Assembly improves an increase to the gasoline tax, it could mean more dollars for local communities. And it's also possible, the mayor said, that the same $800,000 investment made last year could garner $4 million this year.
“And we can do a whole lot of paving with that,” he said, adding that he'd like to do at least $500,000 in new sidewalks, too.
Yochum is also investigating the possibly of adding fiber to asphalt mix, an addition — a new trend in paving — that would cost about $10 per ton but could extend the life of pavement by 65 percent.
And he announced the creation of a new Youth Council, a group of 15 local high school students he hopes can offer advice on upcoming projects.
“We want to get them involved in city government,” he said. “We want to get their input on parks projects, downtown projects. We want to let them see how our city government works but also let them have a say in what we're doing.
“Vincennes is their future, so hopefully we'll produce some council members and some mayors out of this group.”
The mayor said he also wants to work with county officials in beginning the process of extending the River Walk all the way north to Ouabache Trails Park and south to the Rendezvous Grounds and on the cemeteries on Willow Street.
And he wants to see local agencies work together to raise $2 million to help transform the Pantheon Theatre downtown into a shared work space, an endeavor being taken on by INVin.
But the bottom line, he said, is that the city is finally moving, together, in the right direction. He just hopes to keep pushing.
“A lot of things have happened because everybody is working together,” he said. “We're all on the same page, on the same bus, headed in the same direction.”