The Rays vote, in plain numbers
Hillsborough County commissioners hold the public hearing today, Nov. 10, on the first $353 million of the county's money for the Tampa Bay Rays' new ballpark — a $90 million appropriation from the half-cent Community Investment Tax and authorization for up to $263 million in tourist-tax bonds. The claims around this vote are running hotter than the facts. Here are the facts, from the deal documents, the county's own budget books, and the sources of the numbers being quoted.
Brevard school board will stream all public comment
Brevard County's school board has agreed to stop turning its cameras off: non-agenda public comment, long held off-camera at the end of meetings, will now be streamed like the rest. The change follows a First Amendment fight the district already lost — a lawsuit settled for nearly $568,000 and a federal judge's order in January. The policy still has to be formalized and voted on.
A landfill is a hard decision. Hiding it made it an impossible one.
After nearly 11 hours of testimony Wednesday, Bunnell's City Commission voted unanimously to deny Project Butterfly, a 610-acre landfill its own planning board had approved in September — after a state economic-development law kept the project's details secret until shortly before that first vote. The denial fixes the secrecy. It does not fix the arithmetic: Flagler County is growing fast, growing counties produce waste, and waste that can't go here goes somewhere with less muscle to say no.
More than a smell: what's actually being fought over in Mount Dora
Residents near the Mid-Florida Materials landfill say the sulfurous smell gives them headaches. Lake County, Mount Dora, and the county Water Authority say the stakes are higher: an unlined landfill beside a sink that drains straight into the Floridan Aquifer, and they're putting up a $1 million bond to move the fight into circuit court. But the map around the landfill tells a third story — a 550-acre jobs district that shares the sink's name, a tax base that has nearly tripled in a decade, and a question nobody in the fight is asking out loud: if the county wins, where does the debris go?
Citrus County voted 4-1 to let CoreCivic negotiate an ICE detainee deal — final approval still has to come back
Citrus County commissioners voted 4-1 on Monday to authorize CoreCivic to negotiate with ICE about housing up to 119 immigration detainees at the county detention facility in Lecanto. The vote opens negotiations only — any actual agreement has to come back to the board for a later vote, and by then it will be a newly seated board deciding.
The $25,000 attachment a five-second scan would have caught
Citrus County's records manager sent 74 pages of health-insurance spreadsheets — Social Security numbers for about 1,300 county employees and family members — out in a public-records reply. He lost his job, and taxpayers will cover the $25,000 deductible. The uncomfortable part: the check that catches exactly this is standard, government-grade software. In one common case it already ships inside licenses governments pay for. In another, it's free, open-source, and never lets the data leave the building.
Palm Beach County's commissioners voted no. An appointed office approved it anyway
You never vote for just the name on the ballot — you vote for everyone that name will put in a chair. Palm Beach County just demonstrated it: the elected commission denied a data center expansion and paused new ones for a year; a county zoning office then approved nearly tripling the same site's data center space, administratively, with no vote and no hearing. This piece takes no side on the data center. It is about who decides.
Manatee County wants $75 million more for conservation — a noble goal, if the accountability holds
Manatee County voters are being asked to tax themselves again to buy land before development does: an additional 0.16 mill and up to $75 million in bonds for the county's Environmental Lands Program. The 2020 round passed with over 70% and visibly bought land — and the county's own Inspector General says its books need work. The ballot, the track record, and the fine print, below.
Cedar Key already lost a fishery once. It farmed its way back.
On Oct. 29, FWC brings its proposed wild-oyster restrictions for Dixie, Levy and Citrus counties to a workshop in Cedar Key — the town that lost its net fishery to a ballot amendment in 1994 and rebuilt itself into the nation's clam-farming capital through retraining. The rules may well be needed. Cedar Key's own history says the restrictions aren't what decides how this ends. The on-ramp is.
Florida arrested a sitting mayor over $50,000 in relief money. That's how deterrence works
Kissimmee Mayor Jackie Espinosa was arrested Wednesday on grand theft and fraud charges over $50,000 in pandemic relief funds steered to family-tied businesses. The amount is not the story. The arrest is.
Dengue is in Citrus County. The cold that ends it is still weeks away
Two Citrus County dengue cases were caught here, not on a trip — making Citrus the ninth Florida county with local spread in the largest U.S. dengue outbreak in decades. Whether it grows depends on a temperature clock most people never hear about.
A zoo and aquarium for Ocala? The proposal is real — the land isn't, yet
Organizers led by founder Jalen Watson are pitching an Ocala Zoological Park & Aquarium for Marion County, aiming at a 2028 opening. It's early days: no site secured, no financing announced — a vision, a website, and a plan to build community support first.
$6,000 on paper, $82,000 in practice — Miami-Dade voters decide who sets commission pay
Miami-Dade's charter still sets commissioner pay at $6,000 a year, a 1950s figure. The real pay arrives through allowances. Referendum 1 would scrap the charter salary and hand pay-setting to an appointed panel — and voters have rejected raises at least 13 times before.
Inverness pursuit ends with 443 grams of meth seized, two held without bond
A driver with a suspended license ran from deputies on East Turner Camp Road. A PIT maneuver ended the pursuit, and a search turned up trafficking-weight meth, fentanyl, crack, and a loaded 9mm with an extended magazine.
Hernando County creates a redevelopment fund for South Brooksville
Commissioners voted unanimously to adopt the South Brooksville redevelopment plan and create a trust fund that keeps the area's future tax growth inside the area — aimed at housing and stormwater projects.
A fed gator is a dead gator — and sometimes it takes somebody with it
A 71-year-old fisherman was killed by an 11-foot-8 alligator at a Winter Garden park pond — Florida's second fatal gator attack this year, and a textbook case of what feeding gators leads to.