Chelan Mayor Erin McCardle presented the first-ever State of the City address to citizens Thursday night at the Lake Chelan Community Center. The Mayor focused on community values, as shared by citizens over the past year and a vision toward creating an exceptional quality of life for all Chelan Valley residents.
"We've identified a ton of initiatives that we're going to be focusing on in 2025 and 26 that help us understand, and better plan for, an economy that is robust," said McCardle. "Identifying areas where it's having an impact on our local residents and their quality of life in the community."
The mayor through a power-point presentation talked about the need to place priority on Lake Chelan, as a community resource, retaining a small town way of life, the economy of local business, the agricultural heritage of the city and preservation of its natural beauty.
"As out community grows, we tend to lose that sense of 'I know my neighbor' feeling, and we need to look at ways on how we continue to build a sense of community," McCardle added. "We've got projects for ensuring that our local business community can still be thriving and growing and being successful. We also have initiatives where we're trying to preserve that ag (agriculture) heritage that is so important in what this community is rooted in."
The Mayor said tourism will continue to be a major contributor to our economy.
As part of a Chelan County Tourism Impact Study, announced this week, Mayor McCardle says, "That provides a really good basis for us to start building how we plan our tourism economy. Are there other areas, different industries, that can support that as well, especially when we've got four or five months of tourism that drive our economic capabilities over a 12 month period."
"We're trying to do more to engage the community, steering committees, you name it, to engage with us the things that we're working on, and be part of these conversations" The Mayor touted as the number one city objective moving forward.
In that end, the Mayor rolled out a new text platform to allow citizens to stay connected to city news and to receive emergency alerts. Text CHELAN to 38276, for real-time information.
Learn more about the city of Chelan here.
Comments