SMILING HAPPY PEOPLE IN THE CITY OF FLORENCE

 

The Open Meetings Act which replaced the former “Sunshine Law” for the state of Alabama states: “Unless otherwise specified by law directly applicable to the governmental body, notice of a meeting, as defined in Section 2(6) pursuant to Section 11-43-50, Code of Alabama 1975, shall be posted as soon as practicable along with any accompanying agenda after the meeting is called and in no event less than 24 hours before the meeting is scheduled to begin, unless such notice is prevented by emergency circumstances”. 

This has been a source of many complaints from “council junkies” like yours truly who often get the agenda for the meeting being published an hour or so prior to the work session and meeting itself starting. Evidently, someone in the mayor’s office heard our complaints. It COULD have had something to do with the retirement of Martha Murphy and her replacement getting the agenda for the meeting out on time, but that would be purely speculative. Let’s just leave it as an improvement that hopefully will be continued. AND the Open Meetings Act being followed. It is the LAW after all.

Included in the agenda items for 10/15/2024 meeting was the budget for the City of Florence for 2024/2025. In years past, the vote on the budget was taken with no prior notice to the taxpayer live at the council meeting. The public did not know a vote was going to take place until the reading of the agenda items. Last year, several citizens voiced their concern that this was not giving the taxpayers any notice to see the budget much less time to study what their taxpayer money would be used for in the coming year. A pleasant surprise was in store for our complaints. Not only was the 10/15 agenda notice published on the Facebook page of the City of Florence 24 hours prior to the meeting, but the agenda item for the budget was also labeled: "General Fund, Solid Waste Fund, and others budget 2024/2025”. The item itself could be “clicked on” at the Facebook page for the city of Florence to “pull up” the entire budget! This had been proposed to Shana Balch, the CFO of General Fund Accounting office last year and evidently, she listened! Things were looking up for this meeting!

THEN, to put the cherry on top of this ice cream sundae of warm feelings at the city council meeting, two of the council persons were absent and President Kaytrina Simmons made the decision to postpone the vote on the budget until the next meeting to give the absent council members the opportunity to vote. This also gave the public, and especially us council “junkies”, two weeks to pore over every proposed transaction in the budget! A “win-win” all the way around! (Well, maybe Andy Betterton would not like all this newfound “transparency” but some people were happy.)

I don’t know whether it was the change in weather or just a “feel good” autumn day but this was one meeting where it was blue skies all the way around. It will not last of course, there are some building projects coming up and the vote on the budget is still out there. But for this meeting of the Florence City Council, it was sunshine and lolly pops all the way around! I am always proud and grateful to be a citizen of the city of Florence, but this meeting made me especially happy to live here. Of course, on the way home I hit three potholes and got stuck at the Florence Blvd/Darby Dr red light, but I only cussed under my breath a little bit! It was a pretty good meeting!

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