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Two years after Hurricane Helene pushed several feet of storm surge into South Hillsborough County, the Firehouse Cultural Center in Ruskin is back in business — but not before taxpayers and private donors together covered a repair bill north of $300,000. The nonprofit arts center, which sits near an area that took on roughly four…
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Pinellas County Schools is staring at a number it can no longer paper over. The district was built for roughly 115,000 students. It now educates about 70,000. Officials put unused seats at more than 45,000. Seven campuses are up for closure, with a final board vote set for October 13. District leaders say the package…
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Southwest Florida Water Management District officials were expected Tuesday to consider extending a Modified Phase III water shortage order. Summer storms flooded Brooksville, Lakeland, and parts of Tampa. They did not erase a regional rainfall deficit that stood at 15.4 inches through August, slightly worse than the 15.2-inch gap in July. The district’s own statement…
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As Florida homeowners look ahead to a possible tax break in November, some local fire officials are warning that Amendment 3’s proposed expansion of the homestead exemption could squeeze their budgets — even as the measure’s backers argue relief is overdue for residents already stretched thin by rising costs. The amendment, which needs 60% voter…
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Starting October 1, Florida will enforce a second wave of 2026 session laws that do something simple and overdue: treat violence near schools, fake rental takeovers, stalking of victims, and the street sale of cheap high-risk drugs as crimes instead of paperwork problems. Most of the Legislature’s work already took effect July 1. This smaller…
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Cities across Florida are bracing for tighter budgets as voters prepare to decide in November whether to expand the state’s homestead property tax exemption — and Clearwater is already trimming ahead of the vote. Amendment 3, which needs 60% approval to pass, would lower property tax bills for homeowners statewide. In Clearwater alone, city leaders…
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Hillsborough County Public Schools wants taxpayers to keep paying more, and district officials are holding a series of town halls this month to make their pitch before the November ballot. At issue is the “Half-Penny Promise,” a sales tax increase first approved by voters in 2018 that is now up for renewal. If extended, the…
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Fatal traffic crashes are falling across Hillsborough County, and the most serious ones are clustering on a small number of roads. Local, city and state data show the trend, and Tampa officials say they are targeting those stretches. Hillsborough County’s September traffic safety report counts 67 fatal crashes from the start of the year through…
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Heavy equipment moved onto Lido Beach on Monday to start a $12 million, federally funded project to rebuild more than a mile of storm-damaged sand dunes. The work is expected to take about 60 days. Crews are staging in the parking lot south of the Lido Beach Pavilion and will place sand along a 1.2-mile…
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Most parents say a properly buckled child is the first thing on their minds before any trip. A new AAA study suggests many are getting it wrong without knowing it. The study, based on more than 100,000 car seat inspections nationwide, found that most children are not buckled up correctly. In Florida, AAA spokesman Mark…
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Work on the Courtney Campbell Causeway Pedestrian Trail moves into its next phase this week. The $15 million project is meant to separate runners, walkers, and cyclists from vehicle traffic. The Florida Department of Transportation and the city of Clearwater are leading the effort. Funding for the design and structure comes from a combination of…
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Florida’s minimum wage rises to $15 an hour on Wednesday, Sept. 30. The increase caps a run of $1 annual raises that began when the rate reached $10 in 2021. Restaurant owners, who employ many of the state’s lowest-paid workers, are already working out what it will mean for their businesses. Employers of tipped staff…
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Drivers passing Horizon Elementary School in Davenport are now being watched by the city’s first school-zone speed camera. For the first 30 days, violators will receive only warnings. After that, the fines begin. The Davenport Police Department says the School Zone Speed Safety Program grew out of a recent traffic study that found nearly 200…
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Largo’s wastewater treatment plant made it through the 2024 hurricanes without shutting down. The city is now paying to find out how much closer the next storm could come to changing that. Largo commissioners approved $173,000 over the summer for a storm flooding and surge resiliency study. They hired an engineering consultant based in St.…
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Pasco County commissioners have approved roughly $235 million for the Better Future Infrastructure and Mitigation Program. The money is meant to repair damage from Hurricanes Idalia, Helene and Milton and to prepare the county for the next round of storms. The commitment comes with a hard deadline. Chuck Lane, director of the county’s Office of…
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While Congress has spent years debating AI regulation without passing meaningful consumer protections, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier is moving forward with state-level action against the robocalls, robotexts, and AI voice scams flooding residents’ phones daily. Uthmeier unveiled the Florida Anti-Spam Communications Act at a press conference in Pembroke Pines Thursday, proposing to give his…
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Tampa International Airport is replacing paper tickets and aging pay stations with license-plate readers and contactless payments across its three parking garages, a $6.2 million project aimed at getting drivers in and out faster. Crews are swapping 18 old ticketing machines in the economy, short-term, and long-term garages for touchscreen kiosks. Travelers can tap Apple…
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At a time when many four-year degrees leave graduates with debt and no clear job prospects, the University of South Florida St. Petersburg is trying something refreshingly direct: training nursing students for the workforce from the moment they set foot on campus. For the first time, incoming freshmen can enroll straight into a four-year bachelor’s…
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While plenty of local governments reach for tax hikes to pay for basic upkeep, the City of Bradenton is running a $150 million infrastructure overhaul on outside money — with residents covering less than a tenth of the tab. Construction crews are working across the city on 51 separate infrastructure projects targeting water lines, sewer…
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With just days left before developers must submit bids for nearly 25 acres of prime, taxpayer-owned land in downtown Clearwater, Pinellas County officials admit they still don’t have a single formal proposal in hand — and residents are being told to simply wait and see. The county’s 90-day bidding window for the redevelopment of 17…
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A nonprofit group is pushing an ambitious plan to turn nearly 12 acres of land under Interstate 275 into a public park — an estimated $55 million undertaking that could take up to 15 years to complete and, along the way, threatens to displace a small business that’s been paying to use the land for…
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Florida officials are weighing a new rule that would bar undocumented immigrants from enrolling in the state’s career and technical education programs, extending a policy shift that began earlier this year with new restrictions on undocumented students at public universities. The State Board of Education is scheduled to take up the proposal Wednesday. If adopted,…
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Hillsborough County is ramping up mosquito control operations in response to an ongoing dengue fever outbreak, deploying overnight spray crews and a low-flying helicopter while keeping the added cost inside the county’s existing operating budget. Ground crews are spraying for mosquitoes across the county in the early morning hours, with operations running until 6 a.m.…
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Pinellas County Schools is moving toward closing seven underused campuses in a plan district leaders say would eliminate nearly 5,000 empty seats and save taxpayers roughly $25 million a year, even as some parents pushed back at emotional town hall meetings this week. The schools recommended for closure are Sexton, Blanton, Bear Creek, Tarpon Springs…
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A new Self Financial comparison of the same 30 staple items at Walmart stores in every state puts Florida eighth most expensive in the country. The basket came to $134.35 here versus a national average of $132.57. Alaska led at $152.20, followed by Hawaii, Maine, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Arkansas. New Jersey was cheapest at $125.85.…
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Florida is moving to put guardrails on artificial intelligence in higher education, with the State Board of Education set to review a proposed statewide rule Wednesday that would require every Florida College System institution to adopt formal AI policies for students, staff and guests. The rule would direct each college’s Board of Trustees to set…
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Thousands of Clearwater residents are pushing back against a City Council decision to give away a public street to the Church of Scientology, delivering more than 9,000 petition signatures to City Hall on Wednesday to force a citywide vote. The grassroots group Save the Garden says its signature count is nearly triple what would be…
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A city-hosted town hall billed as an informational session on the November property tax amendment turned into a 90-minute showdown after a state lawmaker accused Largo of trying to use taxpayer money to campaign against a tax cut — and forced his way onto the panel to stop it. State Rep. Berny Jacques, R-Seminole, opened…
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Pinellas County commissioners spent barely a moment discussing a deal that will pull an extra $8.6 million in fees out of a major airline over the next five years — before voting unanimously to approve it. The new operating agreement between St. Pete-Clearwater International Airport (PIE) and Allegiant Air is projected to generate $22.8 million…
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Homeowners who pay a contractor in full for work on their property are discovering that doing everything right still isn’t enough to protect them financially — a gap in Florida law that consumer attorneys say catches too many people off guard. Under state law, if a contractor fails to pay the subcontractors or suppliers who…
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Parents at Griffin Elementary say they’re watching their children cross a 45-mph road every school day with no crossing guard in sight — and the county official responsible for traffic safety says nothing needs to change. Griffin Elementary sits along Kathleen Road, where the posted speed limit is 45 mph. Parents crossing during drop-off and…
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Rhonda Siegel did what conscientious homeowners are told to do. She called her broker before Hurricane Helene made landfall, confirmed she had both homeowners and flood insurance, and was told she was covered. When storm surge hit her one-story Clearwater Beach home on Sept. 26, 2024, she discovered how little that assurance was worth. Siegel…
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The National Hurricane Center says a disturbance moving across the subtropical Atlantic could organize into a tropical depression later this week, giving storm-weary Floridians another system to watch as hurricane season grinds on. The trough of low pressure, located east-southeast of Bermuda, is currently producing disorganized showers and thunderstorms, according to the NHC. Forecasters say…
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Pinellas County Schools spent more than $900,000 upgrading John M. Sexton Elementary over the past five years. Now the district wants to close it — and hand the building to an unnamed nonprofit it won’t yet identify. Sexton is one of seven schools Superintendent Kevin Hendrick has recommended for closure as the district cites declining…
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If your tap water tastes or smells a little different over the next three weeks, city officials say don’t be alarmed — it’s by design. The Tampa Water Department began a temporary shift in its disinfection process Monday, switching from monochloramine — a chlorine-ammonia mix used for routine treatment — to straight chlorine. The change…
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St. Pete city officials want to build a park beneath Interstate 275. They don’t yet own the land, haven’t secured the money, and are working on a decade-long timeline — but the master plan cleared its first procedural hurdle this week anyway. St. Petersburg’s Public Services and Infrastructure Committee reviewed a detailed draft of the…
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A handful of environmental activists spent the weekend protesting along South Parker Street, hoping to stop a developer from removing seven live oak trees to make room for a nearly $1 billion mixed-use project on the Tampa Riverwalk. The developer is well within its legal rights to proceed — a fact state lawmakers made sure…
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An international criminal organization broke into a Florida state database using nothing more sophisticated than a police employee’s login credentials, which had been improperly stored on a personal device. State officials still won’t say how many drivers were affected, what information was taken, or who was responsible. The Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor…
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For decades, federal regulators piled rule after rule onto Florida’s manufactured housing industry. Now, under a new law signed this summer, Washington is walking some of it back — and industry veterans say the admission is long overdue. The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, signed into law July 11, raises FHA-insured loan limits for…
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A long-delayed accounting of Florida’s disaster spending fund shows the state is sitting on more than $400 million in unpaid bills tied to its immigration enforcement operations, but the numbers tell a more complicated story than “the state can’t pay its bills”: Florida is still waiting on more than half a billion dollars in reimbursements…
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More than a quarter of Hillsborough College students this fall are skipping the familiar 16-week semester. Instead they are packing the same coursework into five-week, eight-week, 10-week and 12-week sessions that start throughout the term. The college is offering more than 1,100 of these Flexible Start classes. About 100 meet one day a week on…
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Mike Moran ran for Sarasota County tax collector in 2024 on a promise to root out government waste. Two years later, records show his office has increased monthly spending by more than 50% compared to his predecessor, sought double-digit budget hikes in back-to-back years, and paid out more than $500,000 to consultants, lobbyists and a…
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Lakeland homeowners now face fines as steep as $500 for watering their lawns on the wrong day, under a new enforcement ordinance approved by the Lakeland City Commission that lets city employees write citations for violating outdoor watering restrictions. The penalty structure escalates quickly: a first offense draws a $50 fine, a second climbs to…
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Brevard County commissioners are moving to bypass a property-tax growth limit that Brevard voters wrote into their own charter, advancing a $2.4 billion tentative budget that declares a “critical need” to collect more in property taxes than the cap normally allows. Commissioners approved the tentative budget Tuesday, Sept. 8, setting up a final vote for…
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