My Fellow Toledoans,

For this final newsletter of the year, I simply want to wish everyone a safe and Happy New Year. Without doubt, 2020 has been an exceedingly difficult year. Thank you for keeping your chin up and demonstrating the resilience for which Toledoans are so well known. None of us enjoyed the shutdowns, none of us enjoyed the isolation. But Toledoans battled through it, and together we will turn the corner and look ahead. This past year has been difficult on our families and our businesses. Our challenge now, as we start the New Year, is to work together so that we can come to the aid of those who suffered the greatest impact, and continue to create better opportunities for all residents. We all want to “get back to normal,” and in order to do that, we know that we must vaccinate as many people as possible. Doing this will keep everyone safe from COVID-19 and allow our economy to build on the upward momentum that existed before the pandemic. While there was loss for many of us this year, there were also things that happened during the past 12 months that we should pause to celebrate. Working with Toledo City Council, we built the largest rainy day fund in Toledo’s history during my first two years as Mayor. This budget discipline allowed us to absorb the financial shock of the pandemic without having to cut basic city services. At the same time, while developing and implementing reforms to improve the operations of our safety forces, we also continued to invest in both our police and fire departments. We look forward to welcoming a 50-member fire class and 30-member police class in 2021. And even with the economic uncertainty caused by COVID-19, we were able to move forward on a number of critical economic development and community initiatives. The former Southwyck Shopping Center is no longer a vacant and blighted eyesore; instead, an Amazon distribution center has brought jobs and economic vitality to the Reynolds Road corridor.

The long-underused industrial Textileather and MedCorp properties in North Toledo will soon become a 250,000-square-foot vehicle customization facility to support Jeep Wrangler and Jeep Gladiator production. The Marina Lofts and the Colony Project brought tens of millions of dollars of out-of-town investment into Toledo, and they both promise to improve housing options while reshaping important neighborhoods in East Toledo and parts of West Toledo.

Perhaps most notably, Toledoans demonstrated their optimism about our future by passing two ballot initiatives in November. One provided the funding to fix our crumbling residential roads, and the other leveraged resources to build a state-of-the-art Metropark in the core of our city on the banks of the Maumee River.

Putting aside the merits of the two proposals, it is true to say that the residents of Toledo would not have approved these measures if they didn’t believe, as I do, that our community has a bright future. It’s no secret that Toledo, like most cities in this part of the country, has faced its share of adversity over the past 60 years. The macroeconomic forces that led to factory closures and job losses in Toledo over the past two generations have also brought hardship to places like Cleveland, Detroit, Buffalo, and quite frankly, virtually every community throughout the Great Lakes region of our country. So while this past year was unprecedented in so many ways, Toledo has seen difficult days before. It knows how to bounce back. One of the advantages of having been knocked down so many times, is that we know how to get up on our feet again. Toledo took everything 2020 could throw at us, and we held our own. We took some punches, but now we’re ready to throw a few of our own. I look forward to fighting back with you in 2021!

Wade Kapszukiewicz Mayor, City of Toledo

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