Florence City Council unanimously agrees to contract changes for upgrades to the Senior and Activity Center amid Trump cuts.

Florence City Council unanimously agreed to change language of the contract with Lane County to upgrade the Florence Senior and Activity Center.  Florence has an intergovernmental agreement, or IGA, with Lane County for a grant that the city authorized the city of Florence to be a sub applicant on Lane County's grant. In a presentation to the City Council, assistant city manager, Megan Messmer, explained the situation.

The Intergovernmental Agreement

"In January of 2024, Lane County came to, myself and city manager Erin Reynolds with an opportunity to participate in, the community change grant through the Environmental Protection Agency or the EPA. The EPA had been allocated $2 billion in the Inflation Reduction Act. And as part of that, Lane County was looking to, apply to that grant. The requirements of that grant were that they need the projects needed to be focused on, building resilience and capacity within communities. They were place based investments that were focused on community driven projects that also had, community partners as the stakeholders. So it needed to be a partnership between community based nonprofit organizations and then, a partnership with a federally recognized tribe, a local government, or an institution of higher education."

"So in our case, our government entity is Lane County that applied and then their, nonprofit organization is the United Way. So Lane County submitted, the application in April of 2024." Messmer continued "the grant that Lane County submitted was in the amount of $19,555,386."  The total they could submit for was $20 million. "That grant submission included six facilities, to create these resilience hubs throughout the county. So, ours, the Senior and Activity Center in Florence. In Veneta, it's the Fern Ridge Service Center. Eugene will, create one at the Fairfield Elementary School gym. There will be one at the Bob Keefer Center in Springfield, at the Willamette Activity Center in Oak Ridge, and at the Community Center and Library in Cottage Grove."

"So the scope of the project is to, add 1,800 square feet, which will, add an additional card room, a meeting space that could be used if needed, Shift some of the amenities inside towards the streets, toward the west. But then it'll actually add an office, conference room, storage closets, and additional restrooms. The expanded scope with this grant to meet that resilience hub requirement is we will be adding an emergency generator, upgrading the HVAC system for smoke grade filtration for smoke events, adding solar panels to help increase its resilience in the event of a power outage, parking lot expansion to the east, which will include, lighting and, a mixture of solar and wind will be considered, and then charging stations as well. So that that's a pretty big expansion for this facility."

A hitch in the plan

"I am sure we all are aware that there have been, some uncertainties at the federal level on funding. This has impacted this grant. We received notice from Lane County that in the grant portal, it had gone from active with the full amount to inactive with a $0. It stayed like that for several days, a couple weeks, and we've had our fingers crossed that the funding would go back into that portal and the grant would be listed as active again. Lane County, wrote a letter... requesting that this oversight had be taken care of and that the funds be reallocated that had been removed. "

"They asked for, the communities who were participating to sign on to that. Mayor Ward, we talked about it and he signed on to the letter. We provided the information to the League of Oregon Cities who advocated for these projects, at the National League of Cities because this impacted a lot of projects through this grant funding." 

"The Last week, the status, of the grant moved to pending, but the dollars were still at zero. Our grant, technically starts March 1, so two days ago.  And Lane County, was there to monitor that and it did The funding dollars did go back into the grant portal and said it was active to receive."

The original IGA draw requests go to the county first and then the EPA. The contract with Lane County obligated Florence still continue the upgrades even if the funding didn't come through. Florence legal counsel negotiated with Lane County's legal counsel and came to agreement that Florence would not be obligated to make the upgrades if the funding did not come through. The vote was to authorize the city manager to finalize and sign the changes to the IGA with Lane County. 

The Inflation Reduction Act has not been repealed by Congress.