Tomorrow’s Thanksgiving Day, and Volunteers from Faith Lutheran Church and the Salvation Army of Highlands County will be working together this Thanksgiving to feed many residents of Highlands County with free meals for both pickup and delivery. Drivers will deliver meals on Thanksgiving Day to residents all over Highlands County, while other residents can pick up meals at Faith Lutheran Church on Lakeview Drive in Sebring. Reserve up to four meals for either delivery or pickup. The web site is www.highlandscommunitythanksgiving.com or if you can’t get to the internet you can also call the church at (863) 385-7848.
An Avon Park man with a warrant out for his arrest here in Highlands ran afoul of the Polk County Sheriff’s traffic patrols on Monday and is now a guest of Grady Judd in the Polk County Jail with a few new problems before he can come back here. Deputies located a stolen vehicle in unincorporated Lakeland. Inside, 50 year old Tracy Mercer was asleep behind the wheel. Mercer woke up when the deputies aroused him and fled. After a chase through rural Lakeland, Highland City and Bartow, they finally caught him. He was wanted down here on a collection of charges, but the Polk County folks added fourteen more and decided to keep him up there for the time being without bond.
Highlands County School teachers and the School Board are still working toward finding agreement on a new contract, but the sides so far haven’t been able to cook up an agreement that’s not – well, a turkey in one side or the other’s view. With more positions in the system this year cutting up the payroll pie, pay increases offered to both new and experienced teachers have been reduced. The District is hopeful that some supplemental state aid can sweeten the pot – the union says the problem isn’t staff numbers, but more a matter of legal settlements the District has had to agree to over the past couple years.