Candidate Forum
Candidates for Florence City Council, Florence Mayor and West Lane County Commissioner shared their views with the Florence community yesterday afternoon at the Florence Events Center. The four city council candidates were asked about topics ranging from homelessness to climate change. The candidates were agreeable on many of the issues facing Florence including making room for some additional recreation activities and spaces candidate Robert Carp.
“I would be in favor of the city here to allot 1 percent/2 percent of the budget for establishing a recreation department and that would help fund that bowling alley, turn it into something fun.”
When asked about hot button topics like Sanctuary cities and climate change Candidate Donna Cherryholmes was interested in focusing the council’s attention on issues that deal with running a city on a local level.
“we have issues that are important to our city that we actually have control over and those are the things that we should focus on.”
The forum ran over the 2 hour projected time finishing up at about 10 minutes before 7pm.
Ryan Ceniga and Dawn Lesley represented the candidates for West Lane County commissioner. The question was asked about the commissioners 2% raise in the transient lodging tax, candidate Dawn Lesley said she was pleased that the commission did not specifically dedicate the money for a new stadium, but did not rule it out entirely.
“We don’t know yet how stable the Ems are and what the terms of that deal might be so I’m not sure that the stadium itself is the right investment.”
Ryan Ceniga said many of the individuals he spoke with in Eugene were not in favor of building a new stadium and that his research showed him the Ems did not attract visitors outside of the Eugene area. While he did not commit to spending the money on a certain project he did say the decision needed to include all parties that contribute to the TLT.
“this is a topic that is going to go out and be discussed amongst everybody and everybody’s opinion is going to have to be brought in. it’s a pretty complex decision to make, I mean two percent, that’s a lot.”
Mayoral Candidates Rob Ward and Joshua Greene finished out the night. One topic brought up concerned the candidates resignations from previous commitments. Rob Ward spoke on his resignation as mayor of Dunes City. He said his choice came when his character was called into question.
“I had to either say ok, I’m gonna stop the sub-division and be a mayor and or I’m going to resign as mayor and pursue a sub-division and I made the decision to resign as mayor.”
Joshua Greene was asked about his resigning the FURA board, though he did retain his position as city councilor. He said in that situation it had come to a head that many things that the council had worked hard on were starting to unravel leading to a great deal of frustration.
“in that code and mandate it had two major no-nos, do not let the council run the agency and that every representative should by the districts that are called for it and not be appointed by anyone else. And those are the two things that happened that are wrong.”
In all the candidates in each race had some very strong moments. According to Lanecounty.org Ballots will be distributed by October 20th. that will also be the date that drop sites are opened.
COVID-19
Weekly cases of COVID-19 in Lane County were reported by the Oregon Health Authority. The week ending on 10/1 saw 4300 new or presumptive cases reported. There are 272 individuals in hospital beds and 28 are in ICU. There are also 29 deaths associated with the coronavirus, that data is from last Wednesday through Tuesday of this week. To date more that 19 thousand individuals have received the new variant booster.
