News Update for 4/17/23

Some heavy weather rumbled through Highlands County overnight. Despite numerous lightning strikes and some reports of hail, Highlands County Sheriff’s officials say there was no serious damage reported locally.

Members of the North American Society of Grass Racers and Sod Slingers spent the better part of the weekend dismantling the Mowerplex at the Avon
park airport.
NASGRASS racers and friends loaded up most of the infrastructure including buildings, lights, tire walls, fencing and the like, moving to their new location at the Florida Flywheelers.
The group said that municipal restrictions and requirements made it impossible to continue to race on what was a landfill at Avon Park’s airport. It had been the first, for-purpose lawnmower racing facility in the United States.

A new study by Safe Step shows that 21.5-percent of seniors in the Avon Park-Sebring metro area live alone, that is below the national average of 25.7-percent.
Locally, most of those living by themselves are women, which is 65-percent of the estimated 8,000 living solo here. That’s only slightly over the national average of 66-percent.
National census data was used for the study.

It looks like Highlands County is getting ready to ditch a bunch of their surplus equipment. County commissioners tomorrow at their regular meeting are expected to waive the two-step procedure and allow Insight Auctioneers to get the highest and best bid for the equipment.
Listed on the manifest are printers, scanners, monitors, file cabinets and laptops among other things.
In other action, commissioners will hold a couple of public hearing on zoning. One would convert 32-acres of property off Desoto City Road from an Agriculture zoning to Medium Density Residential another would convert almost 40-acres off Martin Luther King Boulevard nort of Sebring From Agriculture Zoning to a Mobile Home Park District.