Three candidates seeking mayor’s position in Florence

Three candidates are running to serve as the mayor of Florence in the November election.

The winning candidate will serve a two-year term and will succeed Mayor Rob Ward, who is not seeking reelection.

Will Yurman, the founder of the local news website West of the Tunnel, interviewed the candidates. Here’s what they told him:

Daniel Lofy

“Keep Florence, Florence,” Daniel Lofy said, more than once, during our hour or so interview, in answer to the question of why he is running for mayor. 

Lofy and his family moved to Florence from California more than 30 years ago. He ran Lofy Construction until retiring recently. Lofy’s three children graduated from Siuslaw High School, and he has a grandchild who is a senior this year, he said.  

The city is well-run on the whole, Lofy said. He thinks the city manager and public works director are doing a great job, as is the Chamber of Commerce in promoting the city and bringing in new businesses. 

It’s not about change as much as keeping things the way they are, he said. “Why am I running for mayor? To keep Florence, Florence.”

“I don’t want Florence to be Portland. I don’t want Florence to be Salem. I don’t want Florence to be Eugene. We’re not those cities,” he said. It’s not that he believes we’ll grow to the size of those cities. It’s the mindset he is concerned about. “It’s just their attitudes or their demeanors, you know, Florence is a laid-back, easy, coastal town.”

Lofy does believe the town needs more affordable housing, which will make it possible to bring in more businesses. He doesn’t believe manufacturing or large businesses are the answer for Florence. He wants to hear what the community wants. “We’ll have to see what people want to bring in, what companies want to come in,” he said. 

There is a need for lower-cost homes, and Lofy has a plan, he said. But he doesn’t want to go into any details yet. “We know we can’t get more business unless they have housing. You’ve got to have housing. And right now the housing is just way overpriced.” A young couple can’t afford three, $400,000 for a house. And I have an idea that will probably bring that down to 250.”

But the details of that plan will likely not be revealed until after the election, he said. “I don’t have everything in place yet. I don’t like talking about something if I don’t have it in place, you know, to me, that’s just not right.”

One specific idea he supports is creating a parks and recreation department, something the city lacks. And while it might add a small amount to the city budget, Lofy thinks volunteers could step up to reduce the costs. “A lot of folks are out there saying they could volunteer,” he said. 

He pointed out that the city has had the equipment for a disc golf course, but has never installed it. “For ten years now, we’ve had all the baskets to make a disc golf course, but we haven’t built it up. Why?”

In an email sent after the interview with Lofy, City Manager Erin Reynolds wrote: “In 2020, the Oregon Coast Visitors Association (OCVA) purchased the equipment for a disc golf course with the hopes that the City of Florence would construct a course in the Munsel Greenway.” The greenway is where the city’s drinking wells are located. During the design phase, it was decided the course would be a risk to the wetlands and to the wells, and would require parking. “The City does not have a revenue source for new parks outside of grant funding. Since 2021, this has not been a project prioritized in the City Council Adopted Work Plan due to lack of funding,” she wrote. 

In mid-September, Lofy wrote a long post on Facebook with the title, “Political Hatred on Social Media in Florence: Does It Have to Be This Way?” It spoke to the bitterness and divisiveness on social media. It was a call for a kinder Facebook where people check their facts, leave behind their anger, and engage in respectful dialogue. “Before posting, we can ask whether a statement is true, necessary, and respectful. We can verify claims before sharing them, avoid assigning motives to people we do not know, and respond to ideas rather than attacking character,” he wrote. 

At least two people left comments, questioning how the post aligned with the many posts Lofy has shared in the past. Posts that called No Kings protesters losers, liberals fools, and seemed to call former President Obama a baboon. Lofy has deleted those replies from his post. And he has deleted many past posts that he created or shared from others that denigrated Democrats and liberals in terms that don’t align with his own call for respect of others. 

After a bit of back and forth with an interviewer, he said that perhaps his post was written in part to himself. “Maybe part of that was talking to myself. Maybe in myself writing that post, I was maybe talking to myself, saying, ‘Dan, you need to change,’ because we’re all that way. We’re people.”

Lofy thinks being mayor means listening to the community rather than being the decision-maker. The mayor represents the city and is also one among five on the City Council.

Shannon Warren

For all her concerns, complaints and criticisms about Florence, Shannon Warren loves the city. 

She visited Oregon 16 years ago with her future husband. They came to Florence and fell in love with the coast, she said. “And it was on that trip that my husband and I decided we were going to get married.”

It took more than a dozen years, and a few moves, but they finally bought a house and made the move to Florence three years ago. And she remains in love with the ocean, the beautiful location, and the friends she has made. “I’ve made friends with some people that I will be friends with for the rest of my life,” she said.

But she also sees a city that is failing to serve many of its residents. Her examples are specific and personal — actions and inactions she has faced personally or that have been described to her by people she knows.

The city is disorganized at best, slow to respond to the needs of its citizens, and may be acting with a political agenda at times, she said. “You’re not allowed to speak out. You’re not allowed to go against the grain. And if you do, there’s serious social consequences for that.”

One example: on the first morning candidates could register to run for mayor, Warren went to City Hall to sign up. “The city had a whole meeting about it, saying, ‘OK, if you want to run for mayor or City Council, here’s the process. Here’s all the steps. The paperwork will be ready at the city on this day,’” Warren said. 

But that morning, the person at the front desk “had no idea what I was talking about,” Warren said. The problem was fixed by the end of the day, but Warren saw the error as a sign of the city’s lack of efficiency and poor customer service. 

Other personal examples include delays in Warren getting a business license from the city, and what she saw as the mayor’s personal decision to keep her off a city committee. “I applied for a volunteer position with the city. And, you know, I’ve been told the city very much relies on volunteers,” Warren said. Later, she was reviewing the recordings of city meetings, something she has been doing regularly, and heard the mayor say he was excluding some people. 

It’s Warren’s opinion that she was kept off the committee because “of the way I question authority and stand up for things that I believe in.” 

Her concerns go beyond her own issues. People she knows have left or are leaving the city because they can’t find a job that pays a livable wage or because there aren’t enough opportunities for their children in the city, or they are unhappy with the public school system. 

There are parts of living in a small town that are great, she said. The lighting of the Christmas tree, for example, and the city’s block party bring the community together. 

“And there’s one thing that was totally awesome,” Warren said. She thinks it was last Christmas, “some little kid had lost a stuffy down there by the tree lighting, and the people on Facebook all kind of joined together, figured out who had picked it up, and this little kid got their freaking stuffy back.”

She knows that three years is a small window into how the city operates. So she is going back to watch old council meetings and work sessions to see how the city works. But she sees the council as inefficient, and believes she can be a mayor who does the research and is willing to look at things and change things.

“The way I look at it is it’s almost like an organization that is so dysfunctional and not running properly and not making its customers happy. And you need to bring someone in who says, ‘OK, maybe it’s time to cut off some heads and to freakin change some positions of leadership and change the way things are done around here,’” Warren said. 

She is, she said, a clear alternative to the two other mayoral candidates, and there are people who don’t want the status quo, Warren said. “I don’t want the Christian white nationalist conservative, and I don’t want the diplomatic Democrat,” Warren said. “Here locally, we have three choices, and I’m neither one of those. So I’m giving a different option.”

“I get that I’m like the underdog in this, right? But if I don’t win this time, I’m only 45, almost 46. I have my whole life to try to change Florence.”

Sally Wantz

It’s her time to run for mayor of Florence, Sally Wantz said. 

Wantz moved to Florence 23 years ago. She worked at the casino for 16 years, has been involved in The Rotary Club of Florence for 20 years. “I’ve been on Western Lane Community Foundation. I’ve been on the PeaceHealth Peace Harbor Medical Center Foundation. I’ve been on the Lane Community College Community Advisory Committee,” she said. And she’s been on the Florence City Council since being elected in 2020.

Wantz said she has the energy and the time to serve. “I’m unemployed, you know, I don’t have a job to go to. So I have all the time in the world as long as I keep Jennifer and our cats as the number one priority,” she said.

“It’s just the right thing to do. It’s the right thing for me. I think I’ll be the right mayor that the city of Florence needs,” Wantz said.

Wantz was born and raised in Rockford, Illinois, in a conservative family. Her father was a businessman who was anti-union. Her mother was anti-government, seeing child car seats as overreach, for example, Wantz said. 

She would eventually move to New York City, and then Denver. “When I finally got to New York and into Denver, I thought to myself, now, wait a minute, that doesn’t resonate with me anymore.”

She has enjoyed the conversations and debates on City Council, acknowledging she has her own opinions informed by her experiences. “All five of us have our own points of view, and when it works, it works great. And when it doesn’t work, it can get a little contentious,” Wantz said.

Wantz believes the city has a moral responsibility to care for its residents. That includes the unhoused. “Can’t we have some compassion and try to find a way to help them as much as we help everybody else in the community? With all the organizations we have, from Food Share to S.O.S., there’s got to be a way that we can be better, be more helpful,” she said. Without offering any specific policies, she believes as mayor, she can look at the problem through a different lens. 

The same holds true for our community’s retirees who are struggling financially because of rising costs. “It breaks my heart that we are a retirement community, and many who are retired struggle financially.” The city can’t control outside forces like the price of fuel or food. But she wants the city and the council to make decisions that are in the best interest of the community, she said. 

Economic development and developing new housing are tied together. “Economic development? Absolutely. Housing? Absolutely. Childcare? Absolutely. They all go together. They’re all economic drivers,” Wantz said. 

The city can provide tax incentives, work with the Chamber of Commerce and developers, all to encourage more housing at all levels, from low-income, through subsidized to market value homes. 

Wantz thinks the city should work with the school district to improve the schools. Better schools would attract more families, she said. She was disappointed that a school bond ballot measure didn’t pass in the spring.

RipTide Sports gives Wantz a vision of the kinds of businesses Florence could support. The company makes bushings and other parts for skateboards and relocated to Florence from California. 

Mild weather, the ocean, forest, can all be a draw for a business looking to relocate. “I heard not too long ago that there are a lot of small businesses in the Midwest where all the weather is happening, the heat, the stuff that these owners don’t like anymore. They want to move someplace where it’s nice and cool, and they might be drifting to the West Coast, and we just need to be ready to say ‘Hi,’ we’re here,’” she said. 

She is also supportive of the idea of creating a parks and recreation special district. Special districts are separate entities from the city — the library and port, for example. A parks and rec district could extend beyond the city limits, she said, spreading out the cost and workload for managing the parks. 

Wantz believes her experience differentiates her from the other mayoral candidates.

“I think my experience of six years on the council, I think my experience in human resources and management, all my life experiences from where I was born to where I am now, I think all of that informs people of who I am and the kind of person I would be as a mayor.”