By Joseph Weathered
For the sixth time, Milford Mayor Ben Blake took to the podium for Milford’s annual State of the City address, held for the first time at the Milford Yacht Club on July 27th.
In front of an audience of roughly 80 of Milford’s business and individual leaders, Mayor Blake gave a speech that contained a narrative of overcoming adversity and used the recent 2017 Class L State Championship run for the Foran Lions baseball team as a metaphor for Milford’s struggles with state politics.
“Clearly we’ve gotten some bad pitches from the State lately and while a lesser community may have thrown in the towel and just given up hope, Milford chooses to dig deep and play championship level ball,” said Blake while referencing his displeasure over the states proposed changes to Silver Sand State Park and the recent closing of the DMV office.
Blake also noted that for the first time in the city’s history Milford has had back-to-back consecutive tax cuts, which he credited in part to the investments that businesses big and small have made to the city. In wrapping up his remarks, Blake also announced a series of additions to the city, including a new downtown micro-grid, reconstruction to Gulf Street and the planting of 200 trees throughout the city among other projects.
When asked about his speech as the event ended Blake spoke of the “forward pressure to keep that foot on the gas pedal. Even though we’ve had early successes we’re not going to rest on our laurels, we’re going to continue to push, continue to advocate on behalf of the businesses in the city.”
Along with the mayor’s speech, the event also marked the debut of the new Milford Regional Chamber of Commerce logo and a video that highlights big and small businesses in the city. The logo, designed by Wendy Macomber from Shift Design + Marketing links together the downtown tower and the beach. in discussing the new design, Macomber said that “our goal was to take these two elements and combine them into an icon that would be recognized as uniquely “Milford” with or without the verbiage of the logo.”
The final highlight of the State of the City was the surprise announcement of Chamber Director of Membership Nell Moll being awarded the 2017 Distinguished Citizen Award. Moll, who did not have advance knowledge of the announcement commented “I’m humbled, i’m certainly honored and very surprised at the event today and how everyone pulled it off without me knowing.”