St. Joseph Mayor Bill Falkner gave a State of the City address at Friday morning’s St. Joe Rising event.

Mayor Falkner spoke at the Chamber of Commerce breakfast on the theme of “Building for Success.”

“You may have noticed the hard hats on your table. As I was thinking about this speech I started thinking about all the positive things that went on last year and are still going on right now,” Falkner said. “I believe everyone can agree there is a lot of building going on around town, not only in structures but also in the many different partnerships. I really feel that St. Joseph is building toward success.”

Mayor Falkner said not all the news from downtown last year was good news as historic buildings were lost to fires which impacted nearby businesses and residents.

“That’s why it’s so important we keep the momentum going to make the vacant buildings that we have a wanted commodity.”

Falkner listed recent highlights around St. Joseph including the sales tax for the levee project approved by voters in August. He also listed multiple renovations and new things going on downtown including the German American building and the parking garage and retail facility.

“There are so many positive things going on in our community,” Falkner said. “Do we have issues? Yeah, we have issues. But, as a city, we work through those issues together, we bring in the people that we need to bring in and we address those issues, we don’t back away. There have been some very difficult issues and it would have been real easy to just push it on down the road and not address it, but this group, this community, come together and we make it work.”

Also during his speech, Mayor Falkner announced his decision to seek re-election next year.