Mayor Nicholls reflects on 2017 highlights and what’s to come for the city

The year 2017 brought a lot of changes for the city of Yuma. From numerous construction projects to bi-national efforts, job growth and so much more.

News 11 spoke with the Yuma Mayor Douglas Nicholls to look back at some of the accomplishments made in 2017 and what’s in store for Yuma in the new year.

“There is a tremendous amount of amazing things happening in this community,” Mayor Nicholls said.

Nicholls is optimistic about the new year for the city of Yuma.

Looking back at 2017 one of the main highlights for him was the 4FrontED effort. This is the effort between Yuma, Mexico and other counties to help expand our bi-national region.

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“We even had our second annual Mayor’s bike ride to Mexico, so we’ve had a lot of activity for our bi-national effort and I think that’s important for our community,” Nicholls said. 2017 also consisted of a lot of construction projects. “We got 16th and 4th avenue, that intersection totally reconstructed, which allowed Sprouts to come in and some of the other projects that are going to build up in the corner and begin to take root,” he said. And how could we leave 2017 without mentioning all of the new round-a-bouts. “We had the Araby road interchange on the north side,” he said. “We had a round-a-bout put there, as well as the round-a-bout at Giss,” he added. In addition, the new Pacific Avenue Athletic Complex was another big construction project completed in 2017. With all of this new construction comes more job opportunities. “We’ve had a very strong job growth in the last several years to the point we’ve even hit the top 25 fastest growing communities and jobs from USA Today’s analysis at almost 2900 jobs,” he explained. Looking at the year to come, 2018 will see continual growth for Yuma, including a transition into being one of the first ‘Smart Cities.’ “That implementation rolling out in March with the LED conversions as well as the anyCOMM nodes being actually installed,” he said. Completion for that project should take three months. “You’ll start seeing your streetlights change a little bit,” he added. The Mayor also mentions work being moved forward with the addition of a University of Yuma campus. “That idea is really starting to take some shape … We’ll see that really take off this year,” he said. Mayor Nicholls also shared another thing that sticks out in his mind from 2017 and that is seeing the Yuma community become more active and engaged in community events. “It’s just this natural progression of a lot of people doing a lot of work with all the right intentions of moving our community forward and I agree I think we are moving forward to a very bright future,” he said. The city of Yuma will also be inaugurating new council members in the beginning of the new year. On January 3rd at 5:30 p.m. at the Yuma Arts Theater. This is an event open to the public.