Thursday, March 28, 2024

Carl Florea eyes Mayor's seat

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    Familiar face, steady contributor to the community in several forms and long time resident of Leavenworth - Carl Florea has recently announced his intentions to run in the upcoming 2019 position for mayor of the City of Leavenworth.
    "(I'm running for mayor because) the timing was right and the fact I think we can do a lot more and I think the city needs to and can," said Florea. "The tools are there, it's needing a lot of political will to put those tools into place. We're a small town with big town problems."
    Florea first ventured over to Leavenworth in 1985 as the pastor of Faith Lutheran Church and settled in with his wife and three sons. He has yo-yoed out of the community since then, but has returned. He's looking at retirement, but weary about full time retirement since he admittedly is not fond of being dormant or sitting still.
    "I always look for needs that aren't being met," said Florea. "Now I'm getting ready to retire, and that's one of the reasons I'm willing to take on being mayor. I'm going to have a little more free time, a little more flexibility."
    Florea has rotated through many positions of importance in the community. He has served on the Cascade School Board, a council member on the Leavenworth City council. Beyond that he was one of the founding directors for the well known Upper Valley Mend. He's currently the administrator at Cornerstone Community.
    "That's not my nature to just sit back and say there's nothing we can do. I was raised to tackle the hard problems, it might take longer, but I'm not willing to give the community up without fighting," said Florea. "What this election will be about is, quite frankly, whether or not enough people agree with that vision - that we need a full spectrum community, we need a full spectrum of living. We don't want to become just a resort."   
    He is not coming empty handed to the seat if elected. He has a variety of interests to bring up and plenty of issues to tackle, but he's zeroed in one particular topic - affordable housing.
    "Over time what became one of my big issues was lack of affordable housing," said Florea. "The passion is for community, it's not about housing per se, that's just wood and brick and stuff -it's about what it represents. It's home, it's about giving people a sense they belong and they're home."
    His enthusiasm for affordable housing was ignited when he watched his own block being bought out as second homes (he emphasized that he has no problem with the 'other side', but rather it meant it was taking housing out of the local community for local workers). Also he witnessed the issue unfold negatively during his stint on the Cascade School Board - one young teacher backed out of accepting a contract due to not being able to live in the community.
    "The idea of a bedroom community, where you commute in because you didn't have an option - that's not, in my view, a healthy community. A healthy community is able to house its workforce or at least have an option to house," said Florea. "It's not healthy for the business community cause if you have to import your workers, they're not as loyal as they are if they're working and living in the community where their kids go to school, they go to your churches."
    Another issue he stressed is that there is a need to bridge that gap between residents and the business community. Florea clarified that he is pro affordable housing, but not anti business. He's already met with some members of Leavenworth's local businesses to help strategize some of the problems they face within the business circle. This rolled into his opinion on the hotly debated tourism topic.
    Florea noted a desire to stretch tourism into something profitable into winter months (shoulder season) after Christmas Lighting when the town tends to dim down with outside guests. He also thinks there is a need to continue working to tackle the downtown parking problem beyond what's been done. Lastly, he wants to add to the town in a way that pushes Leavenworth out of being solely a tourist town.
     "I really hope to set a tone that would be 'let's solve all of these together' instead of this that I hear of business and/or community. One side against another. My goal would be, we hear one another. I think there are ways we can pull together, instead of pulling each other apart."
 

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