News Cast for November 5th:
Election day arrives
Okeechobee voters head to the polls today to decide a couple of local races.
The County commission district 5 features democrat Austin Harvey and republican Mike Sumner.
Three candidates are seeking two seats on city council Jamie Gamiotea, Noel Chandler and Monica Clark.
Glades County has a short local ballot too. Tim Stanley, republican and Kevin Flanaghan (non partisan) are running for county commission district 5.
Larry Luckey the second and Kari West are running for school board district 2.
Okeechobee and Glades voters Both decide one race for congress, the state house and state senate.
There are also several constitutional amendments on the ballot related to marijuana, abortion rights and hunting and fishing protections.
Okeechobee schools have no interest and also no confidence in electric buses.
Superintendent Dylan Tedders polled the board on their interest as he gets a lot of offers to get electric buses with grant dollars.
Tedders admitted there are pros and cons to the electric bus.
“If you see an electric bus on the side of the road that is not going to be good from a social media presence, someone will put that picture out there.”
Tedders added he wanted to gauge the board on their opinions so he wasn’t the only one making the decision.
“I wanted some guidance on whether they wanted to pursue this as an option or to continue to read the email offers and move on.”
The board appeared to want to wait awhile longer to see how these electric buses actually perform.
The South Florida Water Management District heard more concerns about the high levels of Lake Okeechobee, or just over 16 feet as of today.
Lawrence Glenn with the district reports it is unlikely any vegetation growing will survive through the winter.
He said the hurricanes did bring a significant amount of water down the Kissimmee River.
“It takes about 1,400 cubic feet per second for water to rise up move out of the river onto the flood plain. The flood plain was pretty much inundated from tree line to tree line and that was about a mile or two in width and getting fairly deep in portions of the flood plain.”
A heartland school district will start a pilot program with metal detectors.
The Highlands County School Board opted to spend $50,000 on detectors at Lake Placid High School.
A Sebring student was charged with having a loaded rifle and handgun on campus earlier this fall inside a vehicle in the parking lot.
Parents were concerned and 30 of them addressed the school about adding metal detectors.
There was concern on the school board about inconvenience and long lines entering the school, perhaps leading to less instruction time.
School Board member Nicole Radonski said the students will have to unload their entire backpacks.
“It creates quite the backup and every day there are numerous students with late passes.”
A recent survey of parents found 40 percent were very concerned about school safety and 35 percent were somewhat concerned.
The biggest parental concerns in the survey were weapons, bullying, drug use and vandalism.