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Council Highlights – January 25, 2021

Last updated on January 25, 2021

Council Update - January 25, 2021

Award/Presentation/Recognition February 2021 as Black History Month Proclamation

Each February, the city joins our diverse community to celebrate Black History Month to highlight the lasting contributions and positive influence of Black Americans in the Central Florida community.

The City of Orlando’s 2021 Black History Month theme celebrates the diversity of African American families as a core part of American society and honors the persistent fight to achieve equity for the Black and multicultural communities. This year, our Black History Month committee will work towards this goal by offering a series of dynamic virtual workshops, panel discussions, and more.

We encourage everyone to visit orlando.gov/BHM to learn more about and register for our virtual activities.

We would like to acknowledge the hard work and dedication of the city’s Black History Month Steering Committee in organizing all events through the month that show our city’s continued commitment to diversity, inclusion, and equity in our community.

General Items

Commissioner Burns Condolence Message

Commissioner Burns, our City Council shares our condolences on behalf of our community on the recent passing of your father, William Freeman Burns Junior. We know that this is a difficult time for you and your family, but please know that we are thinking of you and we are here for you during this time of transition.

COVID-19 Update

With COVID-19 continuing to impact our community, it’s easy to focus on the things that we cannot do right now in order to reduce the spread of the virus. But we want to remind our community of some of the things that we can do safely, especially with our beautiful winter weather.

Meet with family and friends at a distance – in your driveway, front yard or even one of our many city parks. So many restaurants have added or expanded outdoor dining options or take food to-go to an outdoor space.

Go for walks and bike rides and visit our city parks – it's good for our physical and mental health – especially during this pandemic. Getting outside reduces the risk of the spread of the virus. By doing so we can keep ourselves and our families and loved ones healthy, and our economy moving forward.

Items of Note

C#5-7 & CRA #1-4 – COVID Economic Recovery Initiatives

And speaking of our continued COVID efforts, we are proud to highlight several items on today’s agenda that extend programs to help support our local businesses on a path to economic recovery.

This includes -

Continuing to allow parklets in on-street spaces, outdoor dining at the Osceola Open-Air Hospitality Zone, outdoor sales, seating and marketing in private parking areas and public rights-of-way through August 1.
Providing free parking validations thru our Park D-T-O program through September 1.
Funding to help downtown food trucks operate throughout the downtown through September 30.

We will also continue to suspend the need for businesses to obtain any permits or pay any fees for these programs.

Also on today’s agenda, is to provide more rental assistance to retail and consumer service businesses within the Downtown Community Redevelopment Area. To date, this will allow us to help a total of 37 businesses and provide more than $720,000 in assistance through this program.

A#1 - City of Orlando’s Commitment to Civility Resolution

And lastly, on today’s agenda we want to highlight the Civility Resolution we will vote on today. Last week’s Presidential inauguration allowed us to look forward as a country and recommit to working together to tackle the challenges that we are facing as a nation. With political discourse on the national level becoming more volatile, this is also an opportunity to recommit to compassion and kindness.

The Civility Resolution re-affirms the City Council’s commitment to civility while conducting our legislative duties. It allows us to join the Florida League of Cities to serve as an example for cities, states and elected officials throughout the nation. We want to thank Commissioner Ortiz and Commissioner Stuart for your leadership with this and former State Senator Bud Gardner for helping bring this resolution forward.

We are very proud to serve alongside this Council and of our long history of cooperating, listening to and learning from one another regardless of political views or political affiliations to serve our community.