News Cast for December 18th:
The Okeechobee High School Marching Band finished fifth in the annual Florida Marching Bands Championships, this year held in Jupiter.
The Okeechobee County School Board honored the members of the band, Band Director Clint LaFlam and his many parents and volunteers associated with the program.
LaFlam has been the director at OHS for 18 years.
Okeechobee has finished in the finals of the competition in three of the past four years.
LaFlam said the band has quality musicians and quality people, that often become dedicated staff members at OHS.
“Our students did extremely well as we finished fifth in Class 5A,” he added.
25 schools participated this year with most from large cities like Jacksonville, Orlando, Fort Myers, Miami, and Tampa.
Seminole Brighton Bay Hotel & Casino has begun accepting reservations for the new facility. Rooms will be available sometime in March.
They plan a grand opening celebration in February.
Room rates start at $159 (weekdays) to $238 (weekends).
Reservations can be made by calling Customer Care at (800) 360-9875.
“Opening up reservations is yet another exciting step towards our grand opening,” said general manager Marty Johns. “We can’t wait to open the doors to this incredible property.”
The new resort, which will replace the existing Seminole Casino Brighton (first opened in 1980), will include a casino with a total of nearly 38,000 square feet, including space for a total of 640 slot machines and 18 tables for blackjack, craps, roulette, and other house-banked card games. Included in the totals are a smoke-free gaming space with 104 slot machines and a high-limit gaming area with 42 slot machines and four table games.
Dining options will include a 24-hour restaurant with 126 seats (EE-TO-LEE-KEE GRILL), a steak house (Josiah Steakhouse) with 62 seats and a fast-service and carry-out cafe offering a combination of items from a coffee bar (Constant Grind Bistro) and pizza kitchen (Slice). An indoor event space will offer 400 seats for banquet events or bingo games, or 900 seats set up as a performance hall. In a first for any Seminole Casino, the resort will also include a ten-lane bowling alley (Brighton Bay Bowling) of 7,044 square feet with seats for dining.
The complex will include the first hotel to be built on the Brighton Seminole Reservation. It will feature 100 guest rooms on four floors, totaling 72,000 square feet. Guest rooms will include a mix of rooms with either one king bed or two queen beds, plus three suites and a fitness center.
The resort’s new name, Seminole Brighton Bay Hotel & Casino, salutes popular sportfishing sites of nearby Lake Okeechobee, where Fisheating Bay is a little more than two miles from the new hotel and casino. Fisheating Bay and Fisheating Creek get their name from the Seminole name recorded on a military map of 1839, Thlothlopopka-Hatchee, translated as “the river where fish are eaten.”
President of the Florida Farm Bureau Jeff Smith spoke on the many challenges that face our agriculture industry during the keynote speech at the Farm City Week Luncheon.
Smith mentioned inflation, labor challenges, increases in costs of production, a loss of farm land to development, and farmers not getting a fair share of the revenues from the crops and products they produce.
“Agriculture is important, farming and ranching is important, “ Smith said, “One of the biggest barriers to entry into farming is land acquisition. Rural Family Lands is a great opportunity to pass the land down by generation and a way for our young people to stay involved.”
The average age of a farmer is now 58 years old in the United States.
We have 535 farms in Okeechobee and 325,000 acres in production with an impact of $302 million of value of market products sold, ranks ninth in Florida.
“That is no small feat, agriculture is important in Okeechobee County,” Smith added.
Smith expressed confidence that rural and urban areas can support agriculture pointing to successful strawberry fields in Hillsborough County, one of our fastest growing counties.
The Drive Sober or Get Pulled Over Campaign began this week in Florida. Among the agencies involved is the Highlands County Sheriff’s Office.
It runs through January 1, 2025.
Sheriff Paul Blackman said alcohol-impaired driving remains the biggest factor in fatal traffic crashes in Florid and the nation.
“Drunk driving is illegal and deadly, and it should never be an option for getting home,” he said, “We want our community to have a joy-filled holiday season, but we want everyone to do so responsibly.”