On Saturday, the city of Aurora, in Wise County, held an amazing community-wide 911 celebration and parade honoring the area’s first responders.
Two years ago, a fire destroyed the town’s City Hall. Just a few months later, the city administrator was discovered misappropriating several hundreds of thousands of dollars of city money, leading to the then the mayor resigning.
Newly elected mayor Bryan Dolan described the situation after he was elected, saying he was given a box with what papers survived the fire, a checkbook, and a mailbox key.
“Our city really had no city hall, no direction. We had a court clerk that was trying to do everything she possibly could,” Dolan said.
The mayor and new city council are now facing major decisions on how to move the city forward.
“We set the tone of what we were going to do. We were under the gun.… we pushed real hard so we could get a new city hall,” Dolan said.
Word of Aurora’s determination, rising from among the ashes, reached a New York City 911 fire battalion who gifted a piece of the Twin Towers for part of a sculpture now honoring local first responders in front of the new city hall.