PEORIA, Ill. — In her first State of the City address Wednesday night, Mayor Rita Ali said Peoria’s fight on crime is showing progress and the city is “strong”.
It’s been a year since Ali became the first female and person of color to lead Peoria as mayor.
“The City of Peoria was able to weather the worst of the pandemic financially,” said Ali.
Since then, the city’s total revenues are up 51%, with a capital budget of $60 million, the largest in more than 20 years. That includes $47 million in American Rescue Plan Act Funding.
“The primary investment is in our infrastructure. Our roads, sidewalks, smart street lights, facilities and equipment,” said Ali.
Street work is currently being done on Allen Road and Pioneer Parkway, some of the dilapidated roads in the city.
Peoria saw a record number of homicides in 2021. Ali said this year had a rough start, but she sees progress with new initiatives like Peoria Police Department’s ‘Walk and Talk’ program.
“We have $1.3 million in ARPA funds set aside for violence reduction,” said Ali.
The mayor told 25 News, she hopes city council will vote before the end of the month to approve an anti-violent assessment called ‘Cure Violence,’ at a cost of $25,000.
“We are going to put out a request for proposal outside of cure violence to try to attract other community based organizations that are interested in doing violence prevention programing,” said Ali.
While many businesses closed during the pandemic, Ali said more than 100 new businesses opened in the past year.
“We are working with our state legislators to offer more tools and incentives to support new and existing businesses,” said Ali.
Ali said there is still a lot more work to do. In the next 12 months, she hopes to see crime reduction, forward motion with passenger rail and progress in affordable and quality housing.
“We have a lot of problems, but I look at it as we have a lot of opportunities,” said Ali.
