WAFC Local News – December 29, 2025, 8:32 AM
Transcript
I’m Charles Murphy reporting. The Clewiston City Commission held a workshop on the fire department and the election of Kevin McCarthy as a new fire chief. While he is not a city employee, the fire chief does get a stipend from the city. The city has hired Josh Rimes to serve as fire marshal. He is a city employee. Commissioner Barbara Edmond was opposed to volunteers electing the fire chief and a city employee. Just you pick somebody out of the air, which I like Kevin. I’m sorry, but I do. And you just don’t pick somebody out of the air and say, hey, you’re the fire chief. You know, you’re going to be a city employee. Not going to happen. The volunteer fire department is expected to continue with little to no support of a paid fire department in Clewiston. Vice Mayor Hillary Highslope says the city taxes and the fire assessment are high and people are paying more. Our constituents deserve to know that we did an extensive search and hired the most highly qualified candidate for that highly paid position. If that is, in fact, Kevin McCarthy. Great. Mayor Jimmy Pittman wanted to go ahead with the status quo plan. What we have is working. So let’s just I’m not so sure about, you know, all these things you want to do and hiring people and consultants. There’s a plan in place now for Kevin to be the fire chief and for to use Josh Rimes in the interim to catch any fire marshal inspections, activities whatsoever. Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office had a coffee with a cop event at the Drawbridge restaurant in December and plan to do it on a monthly basis. They also report FDOT signs of no trucks will be placed in the downtown area in January. The city will enforce the existing noise ordinance. State law requires the person who makes the complaint to identify themselves. PBSO wants residents to call the non-emergency number and not City Hall when they have a noise complaint. Mayor Steve Wilson says he doubted people will give their names. It is required now by state law. Most people not going to call you their name, Captain. I like keep it real. Most people are not going to do that. Captain Emory Payne says they stopped 16 vehicles last week with too loud music. He says they will enforce this ordinance. I’m getting my team on board and showing them what what needs to be enforced and how to enforce it. He says some calls are often disregarded when the complainants called in. They call in anonymous. Sometimes our dispatcher would not even dispatch a call when there’s anonymous. Glades County schools plan a community open house in celebration for the new Moorhaven Elementary School on January 5th at 4 p.m. They held a ribbon cutting on December 18th with state Representative Kaylee Tuck. She was instrumental in getting close to 50 million for the new school. The first day of instruction is January 6th. Superintendent Dr. Beth Barfield says they will start demolishing the old school around January 8th. The old school is being it’s going to be completely torn down and that will be a future home of something exciting to come. But right now, we’re not ready to make that announcement. But it is that school is being knocked down. The local contribution towards the cost of the new school will be four million dollars. Dr. Barfield says most excited will be the students. We are all just really looking forward to seeing the students come to the new school and seeing how when they see it for the first time, how their eyes are going to look at that. So we’re really excited about that. It is the first new elementary school in Moorhaven in some 57 years. I’m Charles Murphy, WAFC News.
Recorded from the WAFC daily newscast (Glades Media).