WAFC Local News – February 13, 2026, 8:32 AM
Transcript
I’m Charles Murphy reporting. The city says the Department of Transportation is changing plans for U.S. 27 after resistance to concrete medians and limited access from the public. They drafted a letter to the FDOT last month and each commissioner met individually with FDOT officials to get the changes made. The FDOT wanted to reduce crashes, reduce speeds, and try and make it safer for pedestrians. Sean Thompson said a roundabout on 27 would back up traffic. I don’t know if any of you guys have ever been to New England but I went to school up there. They have roundabouts everywhere and they drive like nut jobs and there’s always an accident in a roundabout, always. Palm Beach County commissioners fired many questions that Representative Toby Overdorf on the question of property tax reform before state lawmakers. They think losing property taxes will cripple Palm Beach County government and lead to mass layoffs of county employees. Commissioner Joel Flores says too many people would be let go. I think this would send a cripple effect to not just Palm Beach County, across the state, how many people are going to be unemployed because of reducing property taxes. Overdorf says he’s heard this song and dance before from local governments. Fears are the same items and arguments and fears that we saw with the Save Our Homes legislation that came forward. We didn’t think local government would exist after that yet we’ve done pretty well since that time. I would suggest that there are some opportunities where we can tighten our belts. Some of these things are going to hurt but I would suggest also that we have a long way to go before these items are actually on the ballot and or approved by voters. He says there are 478 total governments in Florida and he says that may be too many. We found that of those members we found that there were only three over the last five years. Three municipalities that actually had seen a lower amount of money coming in. He says many of these counties including Palm Beach is getting big money from taxpayers. Currently in 2021 it was roughly 210 billion dollars was the taxable value and again these numbers are from your property appraiser. That has increased to 2026 levels now at 343 billion dollars. That is an increase of 133 billion dollars in five years is your taxable history, taxable value history. That’s not what you are collecting. Glades County Manager Paul Carlyle says there have been large brush fires in Mews and on County Road 74 in the past week. He says it’s a tinderbox and any spark will start a fire. With this cold weather and this freeze we’ve had and the dry weather it’s a tinderbox out there. Just flicking a cigarette out the road out of the cigarette out the window is going to start these fires. That’s how bad it is. Pulling off on the side of the road your catalytic converter is going to start a fire even if it doesn’t start while you’re there. County Commissioner Hattie Taylor would like to see some rains so they can lift the burn ban. It just takes one little spark you know it could fly over to the neighbor’s dead grass or or the fruit tree that the cold got and just set a big fire. So we’re in Glades County we like the campfires we like the bonfires but it just isn’t worth it. I’m Charles Murphy WAFC News.
Recorded from the WAFC daily newscast (Glades Media).