By JON NEHRING, Marysville mayor

I want to extend my best wishes to the citizens and families in Marysville for a healthy, happy and prosperous New Year.

The city accomplished a lot in 2014 in the areas of positioning public finances for the long range, reducing crime, improving our transportation and utility infrastructure, enhancing our parks and trail system, and expanding our delivery of core public services.

With the New Year just around the corner, Marysville residents can look forward to seeing many new projects and initiatives that will continue to hold the city in solid well-being for the next several years. This progress comes at the hands of hours of planning, from elected officials and department members, business leaders, citizens and organizations working together to identify and prioritize investments that will bring out the best in this community of Marysville where we live, work and play.

Investing back into our community is about public safety, streets and roads, parks, neighborhoods, downtown, and job creation and retention. Marysville also has several Public Works projects on tap for 2015 that will help improve traffic flow and maintain the integrity of our sewer and water utilities against future growth.

Here are highlights:

• State Avenue improvement project widening from three to five lanes from 116th Street.

• Transportation Benefit District pavement preservation projects, including overlays for 67th north to 108th.

• Shoulder and sidewalk improvements serving some local schools are being pursued, depending in part on successful acquisition of safety grants

• Corridor safety improvements along State Avenue.

• Interchange Justification Report to build a new I-5/SR 529 full interchange that requires permitting, design and federal approval before proceeding to construction.

• Third Street retrofit project that will use low-impact development downtown.

• Sunnyside Well Treatment Project.

• Edward Springs water right utilization to help with water rates stability.

• Whiskey Ridge Sewer Pump Station.

• Sunnyside Well Treatment Project.

• Central Marysville expansion of garbage service and replacement of three solid waste trucks.

Parks and Recreation is focused on the renovation of Neighborhood Parks this year with improvements slated for Tuscany Ridge Park and Parkside Way Park. Master planning will happen this year for the Mother Nature’s Window Park located, which will provide design and cost estimates for proposed development.

We are very excited to begin work in 2015 on providing shoreline access in the development of the Qwuloolt Trail project, which will provide a trail from Ebey Waterfront Park towards Sunnyside Hills and another trail from Harborview Park to the Slough.

Summer programs and events will be announced this winter and will include something for the entire community. Summer activities will kick off with the opening of the Spray Park on Memorial Day weekend at Comeford Park followed by the Healthy Communities Challenge Day, which will be held on June 6. Look for new dates for Outdoor concert venues and our popular Popcorn in the Parks Movie Series at Jennings Park.

Marysville Police, the Fire District and several other agencies ended 2014 responding to the tragic fatal shooting at Marysville-Pilchuck High School. All of them conducted themselves with the utmost level of professionalism, leadership integrity and courage. Our police continue to drive crime down around the community and keep citizens safe.

In 2015, our police will continue to focus on reducing overall crime by 20 percent by enhancing our community partnership programs. 2014 saw an increase in active Neighborhood Watch Programs and our Business Watch Program will be given greater focus. We have reduced major crimes by more than 7 percent. We will be adding one detective position in 2015 to help with sex offender tracking and monitoring, as well as to assist with case investigations.

Among new initiatives, we will be partnering with the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office, Lake Stevens police and the Stillaguamish police to create a Regional Property Crimes Unit to address property crimes in the north end of the county. This is an endeavor to reduce all property crimes that plague our community and will combine an element that will look at drug use and abuse with an effort to help potentially provide services to those who are addicted. No additional staff will be added for this new unit.

Among facilities projects, the city is studying the need to expand the jail and Public Safety Building where the jail is located. We anticipate that police communication and record systems will be upgraded to help better serve citizens.

Within the Executive Department, renewed emphasis is being put on emergency management, which would involve more outreach and coordination of neighborhood-level disaster planning and emergency management preparedness.

In 2015, the city will also establish an in-house Legal Department to include a full-time City Attorney and existing legal and prosecutor’s office staff. Marysville has been the largest city in Washington state without an in-house Legal Department, contracting out city attorney services. We have reached the point where it is more cost effective and will better serve the community to move in this direction.

Community Development in the New Year will conduct an update of the City’s Comprehensive Land Use Plan. The long-range growth management planning document will include a full review of land use and transportation elements, along with overall policies for city land use and development. Special focus will key on transportation and the Lakewood area, and projects to help with mobility such as pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure, and other non-motorized uses.

I look forward to meeting and working with Marysville citizens as we move forward to do great things in our community in the New Year for which we can all be proud at the end of the day.