Pride Month Recognized
It was standing room only at last night’s Florence City Council meeting as the mayor and City Council recognized the diversity in the city.
“I, Rob Ward, mayor of Florence, do hereby proclaim June 2023 as pride month and ask that every citizen celebrate the great diversity of our community.”
City hall erupted with applause from the audience as Mayor Ward presented Jason Wood with the written proclamation. The mayor also shared some personal thoughts as to the importance of being inclusive as he knew several families that have lost loved ones to suicide for failure to find a place of acceptance. Following the presentation the city council heard from members of the Florence Area Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors of the successes marketing tourism for the city have been. The economic impact of tourism doubled in 2022 to 320 million dollars.
City Passes Supplemental Budget
The city of Florence approved the street closure for the annual block party on July 14th that will take place on Bay Street from the bridge to Laurel street. The council also unanimously passed the supplemental budget appropriations as well as the approval of a new contract for Tyler Technologies for software that will cover financial and recordkeeping for at least the next three years.
Dunes City Updates
The Dunes City Council will return to deliberation tomorrow evening on a major overhaul of the city’s zoning and development code. Dunes City Recorder Jaime Mills says this has been a ten-year effort to simplify land-use regulations and city codes. The simplification, she says, will come by placing items not related to land-use into more appropriate locations in the code. The ultimate result, Mills added, will be to make it easier to read and understand the while at the same time make it less confusing to do business with Dunes City Hall. The public input portion of the update process was closed last month and no further testimony will be taken. Wednesday’s meeting will be at Dunes City Hall , 82877 Spruce Street, in Westlake at six pm.
Cottage Grove Wings and Wheels
While wings and wheels has not been reintroduced to Florence the city of Cottage Grove will have their 9th annual Wings and Wheels this Saturday at the Cottage Grove State Airport. From 10am to 4 pm there will be planes, cars and motorcycles on display. There will be food trucks available. The airport is located at 2475 Jim Wright Way. Admission is $5 for the event.