Columbus, Ohio won’t observe Columbus Day

The city of Columbus, Ohio, won’t observe Columbus Day this year, breaking with a decades-long tradition in the city named for the explorer.

The city announced last week that businesses and offices will remain open as usual on Monday, but will close on Veterans Day on Nov. 12.

“We have a number of veterans who work for the city, and there are so many here in Columbus,” Robin Davis, a spokeswoman for Mayor Andrew Ginther (D), told the Associated Press. “We thought it was important to honor them with that day off.”

{mosads}Davis told Time that the city did not have the budget to give employees both Columbus Day and Veterans Day off.

The city did not link the change to the nationwide movement to do away with Columbus Day in favor of recognizing Native Americans. A number of cities have stopped observing Columbus Day in recent years, with some instead marking “Indigenous Peoples Day.”

Cincinnati, Ohio, last week renamed the holiday as Indigenous Peoples Day, following Ohio city Oberlin in 2017. Some other major cities in the state have tried and failed to make the change, according to the AP.

Native American advocates praised the city’s move. Tyrone Smith, director of the Native American Indian Center of Central Ohio, told the AP that the change was a “victory for everyone.”

“The past is the past,” Smith said. “It may not be pretty at times, but we cannot hold what happened back then against today’s society, regardless [of] their bloodline.”