Foley brings Christmas to victims of Hurricane Michael

By Jessica Vaughn
Posted 12/18/18

FOLEY – The City of Foley will be delivering Christmas to Florida this year, helping out approximately 30 families who were affected by Hurricane Michael.

During October, Foley council approved …

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Foley brings Christmas to victims of Hurricane Michael

Posted

FOLEY – The City of Foley will be delivering Christmas to Florida this year, helping out approximately 30 families who were affected by Hurricane Michael.

During October, Foley council approved to take spare funds from multiple departments and combine them to send to Florida for supplies and to support the relief efforts.

“There are efforts underway to help the victims, and a lot of efforts are coming from the first responders,” said Finance Director Sue Steigerwald during the October meeting. “What I was proposing was to approve an amount up to from the departments, I have $1200 in my budget that I could spare because of changes in my department, and then any other directors might have $50 to $100 they could direct toward our general government community relations account that we could use to purchase supplies based on what officials in Florida are saying are the greatest needs.”

The effort was put underway, but in the end a small amount of the collected funds still remains. The city would like to use those funds for the victims, as was originally intended, but in a slightly different way.

“With the funds approved, we sent over crews to offer some manual labor and to deliver supplies, but obviously some things have settled down since then,” said Foley Fire Chief Joey Darby. “We’ve been in contact with the First Baptist Church in Mexico Beach, Florida, and with the funds we have left over we’re going to be able to provide 30 families with ham, pie, rolls, dinner for Christmas.”

The Mexico Beach First Baptist Church is acting as a distribution center for affected families, and is planning to have a Christmas Eve dinner. With the help of Foley, they will be able to provide even more families with dinner this holiday season.

“I know they’ll appreciate it, because they’re still dealing with an awful lot,” said Darby.