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Friday's Daily Pulse
What you need to know about Florida today
Hurricane, home improvement aid teed up for special session
Florida lawmakers next week will take up proposals that would boost assistance after Hurricane Idalia and provide money to ease a backlog of residents seeking to lower insurance premiums by improving their homes. The proposals, released Thursday in advance of Monday’s start of a special legislative session, would provide about $416 million to various efforts tied to the hurricane and to the My Safe Florida Home Program. [Source: News Service of Florida]
Business Beat - Week of November 3rd
Get top news-to-know with Florida Trend's headline-focused video newsbrief, hosted by digital content specialist Aimée Alexander.
The Gulf of Mexico is in peril, and Southwest Florida business owners are worried
Tourism is big business in Southwest Florida. The Lee County Visitor & Convention Bureau reports that Lee County receives about 4.5 million visitors each year. In 2022, those visitors spent $4.1 billion. Tourism employs one out of every five workers in Lee, roughly 73,000 jobs. Similarly, Collier County recorded more than 1.6 million overnight visitors in 2022. The total economic impact of those visitors was valued at $2.79 billion. And the tourism economy is deeply tied to the Gulf. [Source: Gulfshore Business]
Commentary: From Miami to Tallahassee, potential changes to labor laws could affect how businesses operate
Florida’s employment landscape continues to shift, with several recently passed and proposed policies having significant legal implications for businesses and employees. Two pending measures in Florida are especially worth watching for employers and are representative of other current state- and local-level trends. [Source: South Florida Sun-Sentinel]
A new Florida law made gun-carry permits optional. A dramatic drop in safety classes followed
Floridians no longer need a permit to carry a concealed firearm, and gun owners are overwhelmingly opting out of the safety and educational training once required for a license. Firearms instructors are seeing a dramatic drop in student sign ups for such courses, which teach safety and explain the state’s laws about where and how gun owners can lawfully carry pistols and legally use them in self defense. [Source: Fresh Take Florida]
ALSO AROUND FLORIDA:
› CSX wants new digital signs for its Jacksonville headquarters
One of Jacksonville’s oldest Downtown Northbank riverfront headquarters wants a new look in lights. Transportation company CSX proposes two replacement signs that each comprise the “CSX” letters and an image of a CSX train engine that can change colors. Each letter and the train image are digital boards. The letters may change colors, presenting as a static color, for selected events or holidays.
› St. Petersburg City Council rejects exploring straw poll on Rays deal
A proposal to schedule a meeting to explore whether to put a non-binding straw poll on the Tampa Bay Rays stadium deal on the ballot next year failed because it needed a supermajority vote. Five City Council members spoke in favor of holding the discussion next week, though not all were necessarily on board with putting the issue to voters on the March 19, 2024, presidential preference primary ballot.
› Developing America's new stealth bomber in Brevard
Locked gray metal doors bar unauthorized visitors from approaching Northrop Grumman's classified Advanced Avionics Lab, where Melbourne engineers perform secret research developing America's B-21 Raider stealth bomber and other military programs. Here inside Northrop Grumman's sprawling Manned Aircraft Design Center of Excellence, engineers continue developing America's next-generation long-range stealth bomber.
› With partnership, tour: Opera Orlando education efforts grow by leaps and bounds
Opera Orlando is looking to the future of the musical genre on two fronts — and making progress on both. For the first time, Opera Orlando will launch a public school tour, with the children’s opera “Frida Kahlo and the Bravest Girl in the World” introducing the next generation to the art form. Meanwhile, a new partnership with Stetson University is helping train the opera performers of tomorrow.
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