The long anticipated State of the City Address by Junction City’s new City Manager will be April 8th at the C.L. Hoover Opera House.

Gerald Smith, City Manager, was hired in October of 2013 and announced his plans to present a State of the City Address in December of 2013. At that point he anticipated it would take just 90 days for him to gather the information he needed to make such a presentation. He later found out it would take a little longer.

“Unfortunately with the way records are stored here in town, in some cases you have to recreate them from scratch and that’s been the challenge,” Smith said.

“It’s still a work in progress, I’m still going to be working up until the day of the actual presentation before it’s fully completed because there’s still outstanding data that I’m waiting to retrieve.”

In the address Smith said that he will give an overview of the history of the city and how the city got to the point it currently is at and how to move forward.

“There’s some recommendations that I will make with regards to try to fund some the things to do to address some of our infrastructure.”

Smith did say he will not be recommending any tax increases or recommendations to raise the city’s sales tax. Instead he will be looking at other solutions such as user fee’s.

“User fee’s that have a direct correspondence to impacting our community. These are some of things I will recommend and it’s ultimately up to city commission to whether or not they agree and what levels they agree to support them.”

The address will ultimately be a road map of recommendations by Smith that the city commission can choose whether or not to follow.