Santa Maria leaders tout growth, safety and infrastructure improvements in annual ‘State of the City’ address

SANTA MARIA, Calif. – Santa Maria Mayor Alice Patino delivered the annual 'State of the City' address Wednesday morning and highlighted a number of recent accomplishments, as well as current and future community improvement projects. 

"The state of Santa Maria is going great," said Patino. "It's absolutely great. We're growing. Businesses are coming here It's like we're moving forward in all different levels, whether it's our roads, our sidewalks, our businesses. The hospital. The schools. It's just so vibrant. It's just so busy."

The yearly report is hosted by the Santa Maria Valley Chamber and provides the community with an update on how the city has performed over the past year, while also looking ahead into the future.

In front of a full audience inside the Radisson Hotel's Enterprise Ballroom, Patino spoke for about one hour covering a wide range of issues and accomplishments happening in Santa Maria.

She kicked off the address by noting that public safety remains the city's top priority and draws the majority of the city's General Fund.

Patino also pointed out that crime rates, especially those in that are categorized as violent, are down in the city.

"Our Part 1 crimes, seven of the eight are down significantly, in double digits," Police Chief Marc Schneider said afterwards. "I credit that, not only to the men and women, but also to some of the technologies that we've incorporated into the city, with our license plate readers, with our firearm technology and how we examine firearm-related crimes, and we've had a lot of success with getting leads that we never would have had before."

Patino spoke at length about the significant number of housing developments that have either been completed within the past year, are still being built, as well as those which have been approved and are nearing the start of construction.

"There's a lot of building and in all different parts of Santa Maria, whether it's along Miller Street, whether it's along Santa Maria Way, whether it's along Blosser," said Patino. "All of these units are going on, and they're going to be affordable and some of them are going to be low-income. We need to do more in the above average, above moderate and do executive housing too because we want large businesses to coming to town."

She added the city will need to add 16,000 additional housing over the next several years to accommodate projected growth, and touched on the potential annexation of land that would be required to build housing, schools, parks and public safety facilities.

Another area Patino spoke about is the ongoing road improvement project, which includes the rehabilitation of several well-traveled roadways in the city. The cost of roadway improvements is $8.5 million. It's part of an overall $70 million project the city is working on which includes other capital improvements.

"We're going to be doing two years worth of work in one year," said Patino. These are roads that need to be done. All of those have been prioritized into roads that are going to be taken care of."

Other topics ranged from water and sewer rates, which are scheduled to increase in January, the modernization of public transportation to all electric buses, new additions to parks and community spaces, such as the new Machado Plaza and inclusive playground at Pioneer Park, as well as the Santa Maria's new Smart City, Safe City initiative.