By Steve Summers and Kevin Haas
Rock River Current
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ROCKFORD — It was a busy week for Mayor Tom McNamara’s administration with the passage of the biggest capital plan in the city’s history and new federal grants for job training and road construction in the city.
McNamara joined Steve Summers on This Week in the Stateline to talk about all that’s happened in the past week.
“This is really the culmination of months of really hard work by the city of Rockford staff, our partners at Region 1 Planning Council, our partners out at the airport and Workforce Connection,” he said on the show. “I think the key to all of this success is really building relationship at the state and federal level, which our administration has been working hard to do, but also locally collaborating and making sure that like-minded organizations come together and that we’re all kind of rowing in the same direction.”
McNamara said the city still has a lot of work to do, particularly in its efforts to break the cycle of violence that starts when local youth are victims of or witnesses to crime. That was part of the mayor’s message last week when he announced the latest crime stats showing violent crime was up 3% in the city so far this year.
“You’re not going to see me with any mission accomplished banner behind us,” he said. “We have tons more work to do. We recognize that and we’re just going to work relentlessly to get it accomplished.”
McNamara also talked about the casino’s apparent success since opening on Nov. 10.
“The parking lot has been full every single day, pretty much every hour that it’s open,” McNamara said.
He also stressed that the city is getting its money’s worth on recent construction projects. For example, the nearly $22.4 million revamp of Chestnut Street will be done primarily with state and federal tax dollars. A $16.4 million federal grant for that project was announced this week. The city’s contribution to the project will be about $2 million.
“To get $22 million worth of work for $2 million is a heck of a deal and we’re really excited about it,” he said.
Listen to the full show below: