Mishawaka Mayor Jeff Rea joined us on 16 Morning News to talk about the latest happenings in the city. In response to a report from Business Week Magazine that named Mishawka one of the best cities to raise kids, the mayor said he’s proud of the honor.

“It’s really been part of our mission,” Rea said. We want to be the type of community where people raise their families. We focus big on quality of life, the things that go along with the quality of life; strong neighborhoods; we want you to feel safe in our community. We think that people want to locate their businesses in communities where they want to raise their families.”

When it comes to the new Saint Joseph Regional Medical Center’s hospital off of Douglas Road in Mishawaka, the mayor says the project that was 10-years in the making will set the tone for the next 100 years.

“Hospitals are there for a long time, so we’ll see major medical growth and that’s really where most of our economic development has been,” Rea said.

We also asked Mayor Rea a couple of viewer questions.

James from Mishawaka asked if the city would see bigger recycling containers or rules loosened so that residents can put overflow recyclables in plastic bags.

“Certainly people are becoming more in tune with recycling, and we’d like to do that at some point. We haven’t because there were significant extra costs to our residents and during a difficult economy we thought it was hard to pass that on that additional cost to our residents,” Rea said. “Our hope is long term to be able to do that, with containers similar to what are in the county and in South Bend.”

A WNDU.com user asked about bringing jobs to the city. The mayor says the medical industry will bring great opportunities for job growth.

"Still, though, we're still a community that makes things, there are still some good strong manufacturers in our community. Government can't create one job; but we create the kind of environment where businesses want to come," Rea said.

To hear more of his interview, click on the video link above.