WOKC Local News – March 23, 2026, 7:41 AM
Transcript
W. O. K. C. News roads were plenty busy with W. O. K. C. News. I’m Charles Murphy. So could show be music festival got underway thursday. Some 40,000 people were coming and that meant a lot of cars. The backup on 70 went from Berman into ST lucie County. The backup on 4 41 started down in country hills estates and went in both directions for miles. The sheriff’s office says a lot of the supplies and local stores were bought out. They don’t expect all the traffic though to leave at one time on sunday. The festival goers can actually stay until Tuesday morning if they choose. Chief Deputy Mike Hazel Leaf says most of the problems are from inside the festival ground from trespassers and not those that have tickets. A lot of the problems we have are people obviously from out of town but they’re there with various intentions to target the people who are there for the festival. He says recent drug interdiction efforts on local roads and on vendors servicing the festival went over well. Very significant amount of drug use in drugs on property and the festival has partnered with us tremendously on how to working with us in any way we can. They’ve set up searching methods and their own teams for searching vendors. Governor Ron DeSantis is mad at the florida house for trying to cut Everglades funding from 805 million. He’s proposed to 357 million. He says now is not the time with the end in sight. There was a proposal by the house to reduce our funding for Everglades restoration by two thirds. I want to tell you that dog won’t hunt. A Noguchi woman arrested for going around an RV park banging on people’s doors in the middle of the night. Deputies say she was drinking alcohol all day and banging on neighbors doors in the park repeatedly. She was charged with disorderly intoxication and resisting arrest. The arrest report said the woman started kicking the cage inside the police car and they pulled over and pepper sprayed her. Another month for the Highlands County Commission burn ban at least. Commissioner Don Elwell says with conditions as dry as it is it’ll be a while for the burn ban is lifted. It’s gonna take almost well it’s gonna take a ton of rain. Not quite building arc but pretty close to it for us to get dry enough we’re gonna be taking that burn ban off. You thought going to see might get you away from all this traffic. Think again this weekend they’re having the races there. This is Scott Trestle with the Sheriff’s Department. This is definitely one of our busiest times. We’ve got a lot of people working out of the races. There’s law enforcement officers from many agencies around the area that come out and work the races. They’re calling for more than 100,000 people to come to the races again this year. So it’s definitely a busy time of year. Ogichewa Mosquito Control had 16 different treatment applications that covered 940 road miles in 2015. At one trap they had 14,000 mosquitoes another they had 6,000. Nick Martini says they use scientific data to determine when and where to spray. Also recorded the highest overall mosquito trap counts of the year with nearly 14,000 mosquitoes collected countywide. Ogichewa City Council honored their code enforcement department for improving the appearance in the city. Christina Curl and Anthony Smith both have been working there for five years. The council decided to increase the salary offered for the new general services director and approve the contract to resurface sections of Southeast 8th Avenue. I’m Charles Murphy WOKC News.
Recorded from the WOKC daily newscast (Glades Media).