Consultant: Town should apologize for past practices
by Mark Cowling | Florence Reminder & Blade Tribune
A mural in downtown Florence
Despite the town’s efforts to improve its business friendliness in recent years, it still has a poor reputation around the state and what’s missing is an apology, an economic development consultant said.
“There needs to be an apology, and an acknowledgment that there were some incredibly difficult things that happened in the past,” Kimber Lanning, founder and executive director of Local First Arizona, told a joint meeting of the Town Council and Historic District Advisory Commission on Jan. 13. “We need to be accountable for what happened and apologize for it so we can move forward.”
Lanning clarified that’s not her opinion, just an observation of what she and her associates heard in conversations with business owners and community members in Florence that day. Lanning said building owners were going broke trying to make town-mandated code improvements “that were not even logical or practical” in the past.
