Unless he has another brush with the law and a DNA sample is taken from him, JonBenet Ramsey's killer might never be caught. ...more

July 11, 2008

BUILDING SUPPLIES JUMP 50 PERCENT ...more

June 22, 2008

AVON PARK — The Housing Authority of Avon Park's plans to acquire Ridgedale Apartments have stalled after the complex's owners balked at the possibility of paying a penalty for dissolving its contract with another management company, authority Executive Director Larry Shoeman said. According to Shoeman, Columbus, Ohio-based Ridgedale LLC needed to make the housing authority the property manager during the rehabilitation work that will be needed for the 36-unit project. To do that, however, Ridgedale needed to ditch its current management company, according to their contract. "The management is not willing to terminate the agreement without a penalty," Shoeman told the Housing Authority of Avon Park's Board of Commissioners Wednesday evening. "We're at an impasse at this point." ...more

June 22, 2008

Republican presidential candidate John McCain visited the Everglades last week to highlight his commitment to Florida's natural treasures and promptly stepped into political muck. ...more

June 10, 2008

In a decade handling evictions for the Miami-Dade County Police Department, Albert Fernandez has run across a middle-class father bankrupted by his daughter's cancer treatment, an old woman scammed by a gambling husband, and countless families perpetually on the edge of poverty. ...more

June 8, 2008

Over the last nine years, Florida's Department of Revenue has banked about $31 million in child support payments never delivered. ...more

February 26, 2008

I know from personal experience how difficult Social Security's disability process can be. When my father was 52, he suffered a severe cerebral hemorrhage caused by a rare form of brain cancer. As I took care of the application for him, it opened my eyes to the complicated rules associated with our disability programs. ...more

February 17, 2008

AVON PARK — The Avon Park City Council hired an attorney that will begin acting as the city's code enforcement magistrate by March. Avon Park Fire Department Chief Terry Feickert said that the code enforcement office already has 10 cases lined up for C. Parke Sutherland, a Bartow-based attorney who became the special magistrate. The new magistrate could dole out daily fines to people with dilapidated homes and other major offenders, an action the city previously couldn't do by taking offending property owners to court. "It just gives us a little more teeth," Feickert said. ...more

January 30, 2008

No matter what economic surprises await over the horizon, the Florida Chamber of Commerce Foundation is right that a cornerstone of smart planning must include a vigorous quest for the best jobs and an increased emphasis on excellence in education. ...more

December 20, 2007

Teams assigned to eliminate the nation's backlog of immigration fugitives have arrested nearly twice as many people this fiscal year as the previous year, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Barbara Gonzalez said Tuesday. ...more

December 6, 2007