St. Cloud Mayor Highlights City’s Growth and Initiatives in State of the City Address

(KNSI) – The state of the city is amazing!

That’s the message from St. Cloud Mayor Dave Kleis during his state of the city address on Tuesday afternoon. The city is proposing asking voters for a new fire station in the fall. The facility would include a training center and would be built in the neighborhood around the new Tech High School. Mayor Kleis feels this area is in the most need of a fire hall because of its growth. “You have to have quick response time. And if you don’t have that then your insurance rates go up. So just as a homeowner, no matter where you are in the community, you have to have a pretty strong response time. So, as we grow, you need to make sure that that response time is low.”

Fire Chief Matt Love explained they want to get anywhere in city limits in four minutes and this station would help achieve that. “Our modeling shows that if we add a resource in that neighborhood, it affects response times completely on the other side of the city. It’s because we draw all the trucks that come to a fire from closer distances. And so, response times get better city wide when you add just one fire engine. So, it’s not just for one community. It’s definitely a city-wide benefit.”

Officials will spend the next few months finalizing plans and coming up with a price tag. After that, the item would be added to the November ballot for a thumbs up or down from residents. The new facility would be paid for with St. Cloud property taxes. The last two fire halls were built over 15 years ago.

During the address, Kleis announced the city is the first to set up four collection sites to recycle cooking oil from residents. “You can bring that to either city hall, during business hours. You can bring it to the public works facility, during business hours. You can bring it to the wastewater treatment facility or compost [site]. You don’t need a compost permit to do that. Bring it in a container and then you can deposit it in those locations starting today.”

St. Cloud has been planning to invest in downtown and has asked state lawmakers for up to $100 million in bonding to support its plans. Kleis wants to start by getting some funding to make it easier to get from downtown to the city’s central park. “We can start to make that much more inviting [by] connecting Lake George to the traditional downtown through lighting and art. That will draw people to Lake George from downtown.”

The city has been working on getting dollars to redevelop and beautify downtown for the last few years. In 2023, 27 buissnes either moved into downtown or expanded.

The mayor also briefly touched on the possibility of getting a full-size replica space shuttle to place across from the future Great River Children’s Museum downtown. The critical training equipment has been donated to the city as long as it can be transported from Florida to here. Klies says no tax dollars will be used to land the landmark.

City hall was filled with local stakeholders to hear the mayor speak. It was his 19th state of the city address. Klies is the longest-serving mayor in the city’s history.

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