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For all her concerns, complaints and criticisms about Florence, Shannon Warren loves the city. 

She visited Oregon 16 years ago with her future husband. They came to Florence and fell in love with the coast, she said. “And it was on that trip that my husband and I decided we were going to get married.”

It took more than a dozen years, and a few moves, but they finally bought a house and made the move to Florence three years ago. And she remains in love with the ocean, the beautiful location, and the friends she has made. “I’ve made friends with some people that I will be friends with for the rest of my life,” she said.

But she also sees a city that is failing to serve many of its residents. Her examples are specific and personal — actions and inactions she has faced personally or that have been described to her by people she knows.

The city is disorganized at best, slow to respond to the needs of its citizens, and may be acting with a political agenda at times, she said. “You’re not allowed to speak out. You’re not allowed to go against the grain. And if you do, there’s serious social consequences for that.”

One example: on the first morning candidates could register to run for mayor, Warren went to City Hall to sign up. “The city had a whole meeting about it, saying, ‘Okay, if you want to run for mayor or city council, here’s the process. Here’s all the steps. The paperwork will be ready at the city on this day,’” Warren said. 

But that morning, the person at the front desk “had no idea what I was talking about,” Warren said. The problem was fixed by the end of the day, but Warren saw the error as a sign of the city’s lack of efficiency and poor customer service. 

Other personal examples include delays in Warren getting a business license from the city, and what she saw as the mayor’s personal decision to keep her off a city committee. “I applied for a volunteer position with the city. And, you know, I’ve been told the city very much relies on volunteers,” Warren said. Later, she was reviewing the recordings of city meetings, something she has been doing regularly, and heard the mayor say he was excluding some people. 

It’s Warren’s opinion that she was kept off the committee because “of the way I question authority and stand up for things that I believe in.” 

Her concerns go beyond her own issues. People she knows have left or are leaving the city because they can’t find a job that pays a livable wage or because there aren’t enough opportunities for their children in the city, or they are unhappy with the public school system. 

There are parts of living in a small town that are great, she said. The lighting of the Christmas tree, and the city’s block party bring the community together. 

“And there’s one thing that was totally awesome,” Warren said. She thinks it was last Christmas, “some little kid had lost a stuffy down there by the tree lighting, and the people on Facebook all kind of joined together, figured out who had picked it up, and this little kid got their freaking stuffy back.” That’s what’s awesome about a small town, she said. 

She knows that three years is a small window into how the city operates. So she is going back to watch old city council meetings and work sessions to see how the city works. But she sees the council as inefficient, and believes she can be a mayor who does the research and is willing to look at things and change things.

“The way I look at it is it’s almost like an organization that is so dysfunctional and not running properly and not making its customers happy. And you need to bring someone in who says, ‘okay, maybe it’s time to cut off some heads and to freakin change some positions of leadership and change the way things are done around here,’” Warren said. 

She is, she said, a clear alternative to the two other mayoral candidates, and there are people who don’t want the status quo, Warren said. “I don’t want the Christian white nationalist conservative, and I don’t want the diplomatic Democrat,” Warren said. “Here locally, we have three choices, and I’m neither one of those. So I’m giving a different option.”

“I get that I’m like the underdog in this, right? But if I don’t win this time, I’m only 45, almost 46. I have my whole life to try to change Florence.”