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 [Jacksonville Daily Record]
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 [Tampa Bay Times]
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 [Florida Today]
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 [Orlando Sentinel]
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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› Lawsuit over Escambia Jail payment ends with county forking over $5.5 million [Pensacola News Journal]
Escambia County must pay more than $3.4 million to the construction company hired to build the new Escambia County Jail, plus more than $2 million in legal fees. The board of county commissioners agreed to the mediated settlement in September, which ends a nearly two-year long legal battle over money the county withheld from the company.

› Norwegian Cruise Line’s new ship Aqua to set sail at Port Canaveral [Orlando Sentinel]
Norwegian Cruise Line will debut its new Prima-class ship the Norwegian Aqua from Port Canaveral in 2025. The ship, the first of what the line calls its Prima Plus class, is an expanded sister ship to Norwegian Prima, which sailed out of Port Canaveral last winter and Norwegian Viva, which is sailing from Miami and Puerto Rico this winter.

› Coral Gables says expansion won’t doom trailer park, but annexation anxiety persists [Miami Herald]
Coral Gables cleared a significant hurdle this month in its years-long pursuit of Little Gables, reviving anxiety over the fate of a neighborhood trailer park that is home to dozens of low-income residents — mostly seniors — who fear being priced out of Miami-Dade County amid the region’s housing squeeze.

› Long-delayed Port Charlotte resort gets December opening date [Business Observer]
The Sunseeker Resort Charlotte Harbor is opening Dec. 15. Allegiant Travel Co. announced the new date in its third quarter earnings report issued Thursday morning. In the statement, the company’s chairman and new CEO, Maurice J. Gallagher, says that construction crews are wrapping up the final details.