WOKC Local News – February 09, 2026, 7:40 AM
Transcript
WOKC News. Emotional for veterans. With WOKC News, I’m Charles Murphy. Okeechobee City volunteer Greg Maynard and other community leaders got together to return the Hui helicopter to Veterans Memorial Park yesterday. Justin Nelson is with Okeechobee County. This is the center of our town. This is what shows everyone what we stand for and what we’re about here. The Vietnam era helicopter is on a 15-foot pedestal. The Lake Coalition says the Water Management District is ready to act if the lake gets real low this year. They want more controlled burns and muck removal. This lake is in horrendous condition. That’s Ben Mailer, who decried the condition of the lake despite the lower levels. He says there are no birds on the lake anymore. It is a mud puddle. The littoral zone on this lake is a disaster. There’s no birds left on this lake. There are thousands, hundreds of thousands of coots on this lake when there is submerged vegetation. There isn’t any left. The Lake Coalition meets in Okeechobee today. Robots and artificial intelligence touted as a problem solver for Florida agriculture. Dr. Nathan Boyd told the Senate Agriculture Committee it’s a way to make agriculture more efficient and perhaps profitable. He says we should not fear job losses due to robots. We should increase overall agricultural production by 35%. Why does that matter? Because when I start to talk about automation, the first thing that pops into people’s mind is we’re going to lose jobs. But actually, if you look at previous examples, so if you look at the automation of tomato production in California, automation led to an increase in jobs. Different jobs, perhaps. And the reason why is because the industry expanded. Osceola County has a new bullying policy. The National Association of Children and Families has been working with social media. One in five kids reported being bullied in the past year in U.S. schools. Lakeisha Scott says they’ve been promoting the new anti-bullying policy campaign to raise awareness and teach children how to respect and treat others. Scott says parents need to also be a partner in this effort. We need to be sure that parents are aware who have access to your child. Who are your kids socializing with online? And that they are aware and can protect their kids from online predators and being involved in online cyberbullying. Highlands County Fire Rescue putting out a fire at the Lareda landfill at their recycling facility yesterday. There was no report of injuries and the landfill remained open. Glades County continues to scratch their head on the House Speaker’s plan to reduce property taxes. Daniel Perez told public radio earlier this year that perhaps we have too many counties. Commission Chairman Tim Stanley spoke about those counties. He said that there are too many counties. Maybe we need to take the small counties and take them into the bigger counties and then we can save duplication and all kinds of stuff. I’m Charles Murphy, WOKC News.
Recorded from the WOKC daily newscast (Glades Media).