City Council Meeting
The Florence City Council will meet on Monday and on the agenda is the newly developed Transportation System Plan. The city has been working on updating the plan since it entered into an agreement with the Oregon Department of Transportation in 2022. The updated plan includes input from the Florence community and work done by a TSP Stakeholder Transportation Advisory Committee. The final committee meeting was in June and in July the City Council and Planning commission met in a joint work session to review the draft. The city Council will hold a public hearing during Monday’s meeting and consider approval of the plan. Information on the TSP can be found on the city’s website at ci.florence.or.us. also at Monday’s meeting Mayor Ward will read a proclamation recognizing October as National Domestic Violence Awareness Month.
Festival of Books Workshops
Two workshops aimed at helping aspiring writers hone their craft will be part of this weekend’s 12th annual Florence Festival of Books at the Florence Events Center. A 2:30 workshop Saturday afternoon will feature author and writing teacher Robin Woods offering a dozen “tips” for writers to keep in their toolbox. The other workshop, at one PM, will feature local humorist and novelist Ned Hickson on creating “foundational integrity”.
“A lot of people have writing already but they don’t know how to put it together, or they’re not sure where to start in order to outline their story and figure out which direction it needs to go and how, you know, the building blocks to putting a novel together.”
Saturday’s festival is open from ten to four. The basic admission is just two dollars and there is a five-dollar cost for each of the workshops. Local author and festival co-founder Judy Fleagle will deliver the keynote address at 4:30.
The Florence Area Chamber of Commerce is finalizing their new visitor’s guide for the City of Florence. President and CEO Bettina Hannigan says this time the chamber will produce 4 times its normal amount from 8 thousand to 32 thousand copies. Hannigan says ad sales were brisk for the latest rendition and they have reformatted the publication to be more like a booklet than a magazine. Hannigan says their research has found that the booklet form is less likely to be thrown away and more likely to be an ongoing reference guide for people.
“They get included in relocation packets that we mail all around the world, they get included in visitor packs and they have the listings of all our members, it has information on what to do when you come to Florence so it is a visitor’s guide.”
They will be distributed from San Franscisco to Seattle which is also an extension from previous versions of the guide. And Hannigan says they will go to print in the next week or so.
