Four candidates jostle for partial term on Florence City Council

In Florence, in addition to three candidates for mayor, eight candidates are running for two positions on the City Council.

One of the elections involves a two-year term on the council to complete the term of Councilor Bill Meyer, who resigned. The council appointed Mike Webb to fill the seat, but the city’s charter requires an appointee to run for election, and Webb is doing that.

Will Yurman of the West of the Tunnel online news site interviewed the four candidates for the two-year term. (He also interviewed four candidates running for a full four-year term.) 

Here’s what the candidates told Yurman in the interviews. (These stories have been edited for space, but the full versions can be accessed here.)

Haylee Cole

At 21, Haylee Cole is nearly a decade younger than the next youngest of the 11 candidates running for Florence City Council. She sees her age as an asset. “I think being able to run as a 21-year-old can be an example for other people my age and younger,” she said.

Cole was born in Florence. Her parents moved to the city in 2005, when Haylee was born, to take over the family business, BJ’s Ice Cream Parlor. Growing up in a family-owned business taught her the lesson that you show up even when it’s hard, she said.

And it instilled in her the importance of service. “I want to volunteer. I want to help out as much as I can. And throughout the years of school and even after school, I just continued to volunteer,” Cole said.

After graduating from Siuslaw High School, Cole decided to stay in Florence. “I didn’t go to college, but I decided to get my real estate license. And so I’m working as a real estate agent now,” she said.

Running for the council is a way for her to begin to get involved in government and be a voice for her generation. “I wanted to start inching my way into government stuff. I think it’s a great way to learn.”

Cole thinks the city can do a better job of communicating. And, she said, it should improve the permitting process, “just because a lot of people are confused about applying for permits.”

 “I believe we can also try and figure out ways to lower the fees, lower the restrictions depending on what the restriction is.”

The city needs more workforce housing, she said.

“A lot of younger families don’t qualify for low-income housing because they have jobs. They work,” Cole said. Grants could be used to help keep costs down. “I think that there’s grants for almost everything,” she said. “And I think it would be great for the city to look into that.”

And more better-paying jobs are needed, Cole said: “Long-term jobs for families to be able to stay in town.”

Cole thinks the city is doing a great job with sidewalks and roads, though there is always room for improvement. She wants the city to keep moving forward while also maintaining its small-town charm. “I don’t personally want to see us turn into Eugene, where you see five-story buildings around.”

“Florence is a great, great town,” Cole said. I think we can just try and maintain that and also grow the places where it needs to grow.”

Reneé Lo Pilato

Reneé Lo Pilato remembers the night the Florence City Council debated the use of Flock cameras in the city. 

It was, as she described it, a contentious discussion, with the majority of public comment against the cameras.

In the end, the council voted 3-2 in favor of the cameras. But it wasn’t the vote that stuck with her. It was the comments of two of the council members describing the commenters as activists.

“And they’re not. They’re community members, including me. Community members who submitted public and written comments as we want on such a contentious issue,” she said.

That was the moment when she decided she’d like to be on the City Council, Lo Pilato said. 

Lo Pilato has 45 years of public service, primarily in education. 

“I’ve taught at high schools and community colleges and universities. I’ve been a faculty member, a program community program coordinator, and a dean,” she said.  And she was a millwright apprentice in Eugene. “There is nothing more exciting than being up in a front-end loader, when you’re a small person with a hard hat and a tool belt.”

She moved to Florence five years ago and has served on the city’s Planning Commission for three years and attended City Council meetings for the past four years, she said.

She believes her experience well prepares her for the council. “I feel that I have a very good grasp of the different segments of the community, and what the concerns of the community are.”

The high costs of gas, housing and food concern her, as do cuts in healthcare. “We’re not exempt from any of that,” she said.

The city is working with an outside consultant who is reviewing the city’s budget and will offer recommendations to the council. And Lo Pilato wants to be in the room for those discussions.

She believes the city should add staff to the building department. “I’ve heard a lot of folks talk about permitting and how long it takes to do that,” she said. And the city could use a professional part-time grant writer to bring in more outside dollars, Lo Pilato said. She also believes the city should commit to no new fees or taxes over the next two-year budget cycle.

The Elm Park Apartments and daycare center can be a model for how the city can build more low-income housing. “If we want a workforce here that’s going to stay year-round, we need to provide them with housing that works for their income level, and we need to provide year-round living wages.” The city can make housing a priority by streamlining the process, and reviewing zoning and design restrictions, she said.

Along with housing, Lo Pilato, like every candidate, wants to strengthen the local economy. Lo Pilato believes the city can work with the local Chamber of Commerce to grow the city beyond the tourism industry.

She is not looking to change the way the city is operating. “I don’t know about changing anything. That’s not the verb that I would use,” she said. She wants to be part of the process looking at goals for the city moving forward.

“What are our priorities? That is the question that’s going to be before the City Council and the mayor. That is why I’m running, because I want to be not only in that process, but I can help with the process.”

Mike Webb

Mike Webb’s journey to Florence began in a covered wagon. A covered station wagon. The 6-year-old and his family drove cross-country from Pennsylvania to settle in Corvallis.

When he was 25, Webb moved to Florence. That was 1988. He worked for 10 years in retail management going to work at Oregon Pacific Bank in 1998, where he currently serves as vice president and commercial relationship manager in the Florence office.

He has served on the ambulance district board since 2005, and on the Florence Urban Renewal Agency board since around 2007, he said.

Webb was appointed to the City Council two years ago to fill the seat vacated by Bill Meyer’s resignation. Webb is running this election to complete the four-year term, as required by the Florence city charter.

“I felt it was appropriate that I run to complete his term, and that’s why I’m running this time,” Webb said, adding that he feels his experience in city government and his experience in banking give him a perspective different from most people.

As a commercial lender, he has gotten the chance to see businesses “of all shapes and sizes and get to understand what makes them tick, what makes them work, and what makes them not work,” he said. And like most, if not all, of the candidates, job growth is a key element of his campaign. 

With all its upsides, the changes in Florence have also created a gap between those with money and those who work in the service sector, Webb said. We still lack a lot of workforce housing, and we lack a lot of workforce employment, employment that will pay a family wage.”

Jobs and affordable housing are among Webb’s priorities. The city is more constrained than many people believe, Webb said. Streamlining building permitting is a popular talking point, but Webb says much of that is controlled by the state, not the city.

The council has begun looking at some projects that could grow the economy. Expanding the Florence Events Center and turning it into a convention center could bring more people in the off-season, mirroring the Seaside Convention Center.

Reconfiguring Old Town to allow for more parking is another idea the city is looking at. “Is there a way we can get to undergrounding utilities in Old Town and doing some different sidewalks and maybe improving the parking and the traffic patterns to improve the utility of Bay Street and the surrounding streets?” Both of these ideas are concepts at the moment, and funding would need to be found, Webb said.

One of Webb’s slogans is “Make Florence a Place to Be.” He said it means making Florence a place to live now, not just be from. He thinks of his own children who are both working out of state because there wasn’t an employment opportunity for them in Florence. “I’d like to change that,” he said. 

Along with jobs comes housing. “The industry is not going to locate here unless there’s housing available.” Making more lots available and trying to streamline the building process would help, he said. Smaller lot sizes are another possibility. 

And Webb thinks the housing project built on Airport Road is a model that could be used again. The city worked with a nonprofit to build low-cost housing using a land trust model. The land is held separately from the houses, allowing people to buy homes at a lower cost. 

“I think we’re moving in the right direction. I’m very excited about the city. I think we have good people thinking good things and dreaming good things. But we’re still struggling as a community because we don’t have an industry that’s paying family-wage jobs. We’re still a service industry and tourist-related industry, and that’s challenging,” Webb said.

Elijah Yager

Elijah Yager seemed as comfortable admitting what he didn’t know as he was speaking forcefully on issues in his wheelhouse. Yager, 31, is the second-youngest candidate for Florence City Council in this November’s election. 

He grew up in Eugene, but has spent much of the past decade working in Texas, California, Indiana and New York. He moved to Florence three years ago to take a job with the Siuslaw Watershed Council, where he runs the education programs. 

His work puts him at the center of thinking about and talking about natural resources, but has also given him practical skills. He runs community events and summer programs, and he also writes the grants that fund his programs.  

He is running for the City Council because he sees it as a civic duty. “It’s a way to give back to your community. It’s a way to be involved,” he said.  

And he thinks he’d be good at the job. “I have a lot of project management skills. A lot of moving around budgets, finding funding,” he said. He thinks the city should look for more grants, and he has experience as a grant writer. Yager believes a full-time grant manager would help the city as it struggles to keep a balanced budget.

Naturally, he’s concerned about natural resources. “I would love to see Florence develop in a way that, you know, is mindful of all of the incredible natural resources that we have here,” Yager said. He’s a supporter of city planning that supports pedestrians and not just motor vehicles. 

Housing is another important issue for Yager, as it is for all the candidates. The city needs more housing, but Yager thinks the emphasis should be on higher-density projects, as opposed to annexing land and “creating more suburbs.” 

High-density housing — apartments, duplexes, smaller lots for single-family construction — puts less of a strain on city resources because the needed infrastructure is already in place and it conserves natural resources, he said. 

“People come from all over the world to experience what we have here,” Yager said, so the council needs to be thoughtful about how to develop the city. “We should do so in a way that’s going to protect and sustain the huge economic boom that we have from our clean rivers and our forests and our beaches,” he said.

Job creation is important for the city, but it is the area where he has the least experience and knowledge, Yager said. It is where he would lean into the experience of the other board members and the community.

Yager spoke vocally in opposition to the Flock cameras in Florence. He criticized the council for not being responsive enough to the opposition from so many residents. He thinks Flock, the company, is not to be trusted with the data they collect.

Yager is not opposed to traffic cameras. It’s Flock specifically that he believes is the problem.

Housing is a top priority, Yager said, as it is for most if not all of the candidates. And in a city often judged by its divisiveness, he sees this as a positive sign. 

“We might disagree on what the best housing is, but we all want it. People want to see Florence be a place where people can bring their families and grow and thrive, and where businesses can grow and thrive. And we all want to see that, too.”