A Letter From the Mayor
The 'State of the City' for fiscal year May 1, 2017 through April 30, 2018:

published on April 23rd, 2018

Welcome to the City of Princeton! Whether you are a resident, business or visitor, I am honored to represent you and look forward to the opportunity to meet you and work with you for the common good of our community.  Below is the most recent State of the City address: 

During our fiscal year that began on May 1, 2017 and which ended on April 30, 2018, we finished the renovation of Darius Miller Park, transforming it from a dated and well worn park that served this city well since its last renovation in 1976 to what it is today; a traditional town park. Simplistic in its design with sidewalks, trees and benches, and connecting the depot with our north end business district.

We were successful in having our north and south end business districts listed on the National Register of Historic Places. A great honor to be sure and a great marketing opportunity. Along that line we are currently in the process of working with the state in having tourist signs erected on I-80. The districts will also provide federal incentive tax credits for those interested in renovating owned buildings within the districts to their historical past. And there has been interest along these lines and we are hopeful these projects will move forward.

We established four new city committees; a Historical Commission, a Bicycle/ pedestrian Commission, an Electric Utility Advisory Committee and an Art Commission. These committees are fully appointed and have been busy meeting and paving the way toward our future. We will be hearing from these groups their ideas and proposals as we move through summer.

We continue to work on infrastructure concerns across all facets of the city. Last summer we paved six sections of city streets throughout town and two parking lots, with landscaping. We also applied for a Community Development Block Grant for several blocks of sanitary sewer work involving north Pleasant and First streets. City council members and City staff walked door to door soliciting residents involvement in the grant process, a necessity for its success, and we will soon learn if we’ll be awarded the grant. We also applied for a Illinois Transportation Enhancement Grant for a project involving the depot campus. The project involves paving the parking lot with lighting, adding a cul de sac for passenger drop off and the laying of brick around the park, hopefully repurposed from Euclid Avenue. We will hear if we’re awarded this grant this summer. 

We sold the transfer station for $2 million and in doing so locked in, for 30 years, our use of the transfer station for free.

The old Wal Mart building sold and now is home to NAPA and The Dollar Store.

And we paid down an additional $3.6 million in long term debt, dropping us to $32 million. Just three years ago we were at $40 million, so progress in debt reduction continues to be a financial primary focus.

During our next fiscal year, beginning May 1, 2018, we expect to reduce our long term debt by another $3.8 million, and we will have reduced our debt by $10 million in 4 years time.

We will be paving 7 sections of city streets during the summer of 2018; north Vernon, Carter Street, Griswold, Park Avenue East, West Central, Chestnut Street and Miles Court, which also includes a new water main and sewer line. We are also hoping to finally renovate Euclid Ave from Central to Elm Place. This is a project the city has been working on for something like 7 years now, and it finally looks like the State will give us the ok to move forward with the project.

We will be adding more benches and chairs on Main Street.

And we will be unveiling a new city website very soon; much more user friendly and very easy to navigate.

Promier Products is expanding to Princeton, Beck’s is getting ready to open their new station on West Peru Street, First State Bank is close to putting up their new branch on North Main... and we have a few other very promising projects in the works that will transform even further who we are as a community.

But we do have challenges. The governor’s budget continues the 10% reduction of the Local Governmental Distributive Fund, which is our share of income taxes owed to the city, and which is the city’s third largest revenue source. And this past July the state imposed a 2% administrative fee for collecting our non-home Rule sales tax that was passed in 2004. We continue to see a reduction in revenue from Personal Property Replacement tax and Telecommunications tax. And health insurance.. the city pays $1.8 million a year for health insurance for our employees; a significant amount of money that annually grows. And the totality of our street infrastructure continues to deteriorate at a accelerating rate.

Your city council was elected to represent Princeton, its residents and its interests. That means focusing on what our issues are as a community, determine our priorities, discuss and debate what the correct route is and then develop an action plan and move forward. Unfortunately, it’s not always easy because many times tough and unpopular decisions have to be made out of necessity, but that’s the challenge.

Embrace challenges because without challenges improvement is hard to come by. Without challenges it’s difficult to move forward.

All this said I don’t think anyone would disagree when I say that Princeton’s future has never looked brighter.

Raymond MabryCity CouncilMayor815-878-1981