The city as it presents itself

The official voice, 2025–2026

The name in current use: The city calls itself, in its current official voice, the Princess City — the name the folklore record traces to a nineteenth-century fiction and the city has carried since. It is not a retired nickname: the mayor's addresses speak of energy "pulsing through 'The Princess City,'" the Common Council's own minutes of February 2026 welcome a visitor back to "the Princess City of Mishawaka," and the city's letters to its residents use it as the ordinary name of home. The record of the name stands in the Folklore section; the fact for this section is its currency — in November 2026 it is the name in use, quotation marks and all.

The administration's phrase: The Wood administration's own name for its method is the Mishawaka Way, defined in the mayor's 2025 State of the City address as "a promise to work together with integrity and ingenuity to ensure that every decision made enhances the quality of life in the city" — the definition printed here as the administration's, in its words. The mayor's claims about his city print as his claims, at their dates: in the 2026 address, of 30 April, a 3.68 percent decrease in Part 1 crimes in 2025 against 2024; a self-administered grade of C+ for the city's financial state in the face of the state's Senate Enrolled Act 1; and the approaching bicentennial held up as the frame of the whole — the city marked its 175th anniversary in 2008, and on the same count its two-hundredth falls in 2033. The city's civic honors of the season stand beside them at one line: the Battell Community Center renamed for former Mayor Bob Kovach by the city's release of 24 September 2026, and Mayor Wood named the Indiana Fire and EMS Elected Official of the Year on 11 September 2026 — both from the city's own news record, printed as published.

The voice, dated: The city's self-presentation runs on a monthly paper, the Mishawaka Communicator, whose October 2026 edition went to residents in the ordinary course, and on a news page that in the first days of November 2026 was publishing the city's case for its police department's value and the notice opening the 2027 federal Community Development Block Grant application round — the present tense of a working city government, printed here at the size of its own publications and no larger.

Sources:

1. City of Mishawaka — the mayor's State of the City addresses, 14 April 2025 and 30 April 2026 (the "Mishawaka Way" definition; "The Princess City" in current use; the bicentennial framing); Common Council minutes, 2 February 2026 ("the Princess City of Mishawaka").
2. South Bend Tribune, 2 and 19 May 2026 — the 2026 address's claims as reported (the 3.68 percent Part 1 crime decrease; the C+ financial grade).
3. City of Mishawaka — news releases of 11 and 24 September 2026 (the Elected Official of the Year honor; the Battell Community Center renaming) and the news page as it stood in November 2026 (the Communicator's October 2026 edition; the police-value publication of 5 November 2026; the 2027 CDBG application notice).
4. The Folklore section of this history — the Princess name's record; the Congressional Record of 30 July 2008 (the city's 175th anniversary).