GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — City of Grand Rapids Mayor Rosalynn Bliss is nearing the end of her time in office. Bliss is the city's 66th mayor but the first female one to lead the city.
"I'm just so grateful to have been able to serve our city. I just can't say 'thank you' enough to everyone who supported me," Bliss told FOX 17.
Bliss started her career with the city back in 2005 as the 2nd Ward city commissioner. Then in 2016, she was elected to lead the city forward. We asked what she would tell herself back then what she knows now.
"I would tell myself to be prepared for anything," Bliss said.
Now in her 19th year of public service, the mayor has a lot to look back on.
"We have 'corridor improvement' districts in every single one of our neighborhoods, neighborhood business districts. I'm really proud of that. I'm proud of the work we've done around environmental sustainability," Bliss said.
She highlighted bringing the biodigester online, adding solar panels at the Lake Michigan filtration plant, and planting 15,000 trees throughout the city.
The city has put forth effort to revitalize in and around the Grand River. We walked down to the newly renovated green space at Lyon Square Park. Restoring the rapids is a big project for the city leader. Recently, she was part of relocating native mussels within the river's lower reach. She's looking forward to hopefully seeing the rapids restored in the upcoming years.
"I hope it'll be done in the next two to four years, that we'll see more people in the river. We'll have more places like this where people can gather by the river, and we'll kind of reclaim the river," Bliss said. "It's been a long time, and now it's going to happen. We're redoing this river walk right down here right now."
Grand Rapids, Michigan’s second-largest city, is seeing tremendous growth.
"Next to it is going to be a soccer stadium that we're going to see one of these days. Hopefully, over here, you can see the cranes for the amphitheater. Hopefully, next to it, we'll have a significant development soon," Bliss added.
The mayor needed to navigate some hard times while in office like the pandemic, the 2020 civil unrest, and the death of Patrick Lyoya.
"The tragic killing of Patrick Lyoya and all of those things were, I’d say, heartbreaking, quite frankly, and trying to figure out how to bring community together when there was so much pain and anger and distrust," Bliss said.
During her time in office, she leaned on relationships she built to help bring the community together.
"I think it's a challenge for all of us is to figure out what can we do individually but then collectively to heal, to move forward and to figure out how to not just make sure it doesn't happen again," Bliss said.
The mayor explains that her predecessor, George Heartwell, hinted to her in a letter left to her she never has to do anything alone.
"You're in a unique position to be a convener, to bring people around the table, but you need all those partners to make things happen," Bliss said.
She plans to leave a letter to the incoming Mayor David LaGrand.
"The advice is to be mindful of your time, like... you can't say yes to everything. We're a big city. We're a growing city," Bliss said. "If you're going to accomplish all the things you put on your to-do list, you have to be incredibly intentional about how you spend your time."
Bliss tells FOX 17 she hasn’t decided what’s next for her, while people have contacted her about opportunities. She knows that she has a strong passion for the public sector.
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