MISHAWAKA — Next year, the city-owned Mishawaka Utilities will stop buying the electricity that it passes along to its customers from Indiana Michigan Power, switching over to a northern Michigan provider that, Mayor Dave Wood hopes, will one day allow a small rate decrease.
It was among the news that Wood announced Monday in his annual State of the City speech, delivered at the Battell Community Center. A written report will be posted Tuesday at mishawaka.in.gov.
He also said that the city and School City of Mishawaka will work with Google on a pilot project to bring virtual tours and augmented reality to visitors’ phones at city parks.
Wood said he’d always wanted a virtual tour of the parks, but then the Pokemon craze in the parks spurred ideas and School City staff found the app Google Expeditions. The mayor’s youth council also came up with ideas of how to use it. Depending on the content that the city and schools generate, visitors could see images or even find historical tours in the parks.
Wood said the city may save about 25 percent on the electricity it buys wholesale by switching to Wolverine Power Cooperative, based in Cadillac, Mich., where it has signed a 5-year agreement.
The city gave notice to I&M late last year, Wood said, noting that the switch in power will begin in June 2020. He said the city hopes to use the savings to drop its rates to customers, though the city also will need the savings to make $60 million in needed upgrades to its own substations.
Mishawaka, Niles, New Carlisle and several nearby municipalities had already given I&M in 2016 the required 4-year notice that they intended to break off their relationship in 2020, well before their 20-year contracts would end in 2026. The city buys the electricity, then uses its own lines and infrastructure to transmit it to Mishawaka Utilities customers.
Park features
A few city parks will see major changes this year. Construction of the anticipated new ice ribbon and the community building to go with it next to Beutter Park may not begin until next year at the earliest, but work will begin this year on the parts around it: a beer garden with picnic areas and overhead trellises, public restrooms, expanded parking and dressed-up park space by the St. Joseph River.
The ice ribbon and its buildings could come later than 2020, Wood said, depending on how much cash the city can save up. He said the city wants to avoid using a bond.
Battell Park will see the addition of a Veterans Plaza this year. It will mean the relocation of the bronze Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument, built in 1884, as well as the monument’s refurbishing, which may not finish until next year.
The city will buy a mobile stage that it can use for veteran events and to set up for events at various parks.
A permanent stage is now being built on the oval lawn at Central Park, expected to finish this spring at a cost of nearly $800,000.
The city managed to save $3.4 million in 2018 through conservative spending, Wood said, while it still lost $5.4 million because of state property tax caps. In 2023, he said the city forecasts a loss of $10 million.
The way local governments are financed and the way properties are assessed, he lamented, are “broken and in need of repair.”
The city’s assessed values rose slightly by 1.3 percent although it’s still down 24 percent from a high in 2007, he said, adding, “and that’s after $1 billion in new construction.”
“We want an assessment system to be fair and consistent … and also to keep pace with what’s happening in the market,” he said, noting how assessments vary among nearby homes. City staff is working with the Penn Township assessor and entrepreneurial group enFocus to recommend updates to the process.
New construction permits rose by 13.7 percent last year for a total of $158 million — the fifth year in which the number rose by at least 13 percent and $13 million. Last year’s high-profile projects included the large Mill at Ironworks Plaza with 260 apartments and retail, the Beacon Health System hospital and Vibra hospital and additions to the Center for Hospice Care campus.
Permits were issued for 56 new single-family homes in 2018, down from 78 in 2017 but up from 36 in 2016.
The number of certain crimes rose by 53, for a total of 3,445 homicides, rapes, robberies, assaults, burglaries, thefts and arsons, which Wood characterized as “stable” for a “city that has added hundreds of residential units.”