Clinton mayor holds state-of-the-city address

The City of Clinton hopes to grow its community. At the state of the city address, Mayor Scott Maddasion spoke about the city's progress in recent years.

(Gavin Waidelich, OurQuadCities.com)

"Clinton continues to evolve, and I'm excited to reflect on the strides we've made," said Maddasion.

With two terms as mayor, Maddasion believes he's learned what will make Clinton grow.

"When I first started this five years ago, I thought growing jobs was the key to growing your community, and that's extremely important to provide for your citizens, but housing is actually a bigger key to growing your community," said Maddasion. "That's something that we've really been focused on over the last three to five years, how do we increase housing options to the community?"

Maddasion wants to bring in those who work in the city but live outside its limits.

"We're always trying to find ways to capture those people that maybe don't live in Clinton, but are curious," said Maddasion.

The city intends to pique that curiosity.

"We love Clinton. We want to make Clinton the best place to live, work and play, and that's what we're doing here in each and every decision we make as we've gone forward and kind of trying to generate some new buzz and generate some new projects and really make Clinton a good place," said Maddasion.

The city wants to strengthen its downtown, with events like Tailgates n' Tallboys and repurposing old buildings into new developments like the historic Lafayette building. Maddasion believes the people of Clinton have answered that call.

(OurQuadCities.com)

"The development we've seen downtown, that's something that completely has been done by the citizens," said Maddasion. "That's the property owners that are down there, that are doing the new facelifts and doing the new facades on their buildings. That's the new businesses that are taking a chance on Clinton and they bought a building downtown and remodeled it. It's the downtown SSMID (Self-Supported Municipal Improvement District) that's working on all the events and all that."

Maddasion also touted business and commercial expansion of more than $1 billion in the last two years, as well as a drop of crime of over 12%.

For more about Clinton and the Grow Clinton initiative, visit here .