News Update for 2/25/21

Highlands County sheriff’s deputies are working a bad traffic accident. Reportedly it happened this morning on the northbound lanes of Highway 27 north of Avon Park.
Early reports are the mishap involves a fatality. No other details have been released.

Wearing a Kente Cloth and a facemask, longtime Avon Park activist Shirley Johnson has been sworn in as the newest member of the Avon Park city council. Johnson was selected to fill out the unexpired term of the late Vice Mayor Stanley Spurlock.
He died this past December, reportedly of a heart attack.

The city of Avon Park once again has assumed ownership of the much-troubled Brickell Building. They accepted the structure back from the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency, which at one time had eyed it as a center for low income housing in the downtown area.
Meanwhile, crews from Excavation Point are preparing to take down the shell of the Wild Building. That structure on Main Street has been deemed a hazard and irreparable.
Work on that is slated to begin this week.

Representatives of WaWa are planning to kick off expansion plans in Highlands County this morning with back-to-back groundbreakings.
The first shovels-full of earth will be turned this morning at 9:00 in Lake Placid, followed by a similar event at 10:30 in Sebring.
Spokesmen for the organization say the events will provide participants a look at WaWa’s approach to convenience.

A couple of Highlands County residents were injured yesterday in a Polk County traffic accident Lake Wales police say 53-year-old Wilfeda Cesaro of Avon Park, drove up under the back of a semi tractor-trailer rig hauling a load of sod, which had been stopped at a traffic signal in front of the Eagle Ridge Mall.
Both Cesario and 55-year-old Rosa Cesario of Sebring were taken to Lakeland Regional Medical Center.

Highlands County commissioners are calling yesterday’s coronavirus inoculation event a success, with better than 1400 doses being administered.
Those who want to be on the waiting list can do so, by contacting the State of Florida through the county’s internet web page.

Apparently there will be no municipal election in Frostproof. The only candidates to file to run, were current incumbents Leslie Brewer and Tashana True