ORLANDO, Fla. – Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer announced Tuesday he “would like to ensure” that a permanent memorial to the Pulse nightclub shooting is in place by the 10-year remembrance of the tragedy.
“We want to engage the family members, the victims and survivors, the first responders and everybody that has a stake in this issue,” Dyer said. “(Our) critical goal is to ensure that it honors the victims and those that were impacted by the tragedy and pays tribute to the resiliency that the city and its residents presented after the Pulse tragedy.”
Dyer made the announcement at a news conference discussing the city’s next steps after taking over the plans from the now dissolved onePULSE Foundation for a memorial to the victims of the 2016 nightclub shooting.
onePULSE Foundation announced in its final letter Monday that the city will be establishing a new fund and lead efforts on next year’s CommUNITY Rainbow Run and annual remembrance ceremony.
“We’re going to utilize our existing 501C3 that has been in place and was used back when we raised funds that we gave directly to the victims right after Pulse,” Dyer said. “So we will establish under that the Orlando United Pulse Memorial Fund. It’ll allow people to make contributions to the memorial specifically. So we want to make sure that we create the permanent memorial, we do it in a transparent way.”
Orlando purchased the property in October after a tumultuous series of events over the summer that slowed down the construction of a memorial honoring those killed on June 12, 2016.
“I think that perhaps they (onePulse) lost focus on the primary mission of creating the memorial and had a lot of focus on creating the museum. We are solely focused on creating the memorial,” Dyer said.
Dyer also announced a new page on the City of Orlando’s website to give updates on the project.
News 6 spoke with Orlando City Commissioner Patty Sheehan last month about the city’s plans.
She said the project will be financed by donations, which would likely be managed by the Orlando Community and Youth Trust — a nonprofit organization that helps fund the city’s parks and recreation activities, such as Orlando Kidz Zone, My Brothers Keeper and others.
She also said a committee will be formed to help steer the project, but it will also rely on direct input from the victims’ families.
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