The Lake Padgett Estates Civic Association will meet at 7 p.m Tuesday at the LPECA Stables Facility, 22140 Coldstream Road. The guest speaker will be a representative of the Pasco County Sheriff's Office, who will make a presentation of the sheriff's proposed budget. Civic Association members are working on a Neighborhood Watch program and an Autumn Civic Pride Day in the Parks. The group now has an active membership in the Pasco Alliance of Community Assocations. For more information, call Rich Gray, LPECA chairman at (813) 996-7868. ...more

July 21, 2008

AVON PARK — Volunteers, students and prison inmates are finishing up two new Avon Park Future Farmers of America barns at 1180 E. Winthrop St., which are now "90 percent complete," according to FFA Alumni Association members. The new structures would allow Avon Park high and middle school students to hold their pigs and cattle without having to borrow a spare acre from friends outside of the city. Even though all three high schools have agriculture students who raise farm animals for show at events such as the Highlands County Fair, Avon Park never had its own barn. Before August, when the students need to weigh in their animals for the next Highlands County Fair, they will have 24 hog and 12 cattle pens for those who don't have enough land to raise the livestock. FFA Alumni President Sally Perry said the cattle barn will have its first steers and heifers June 22, the day of the planned ribbon-cutting ceremony. ...more

June 8, 2008

LAKE PLACID — Highlands County Lakes Manager Clell Ford said he hopes to begin dredging and cleaning up several residential canals feeding into Lake Istokpoga by November. The county already did some testing on 17 residential canals, including some of the canals located in Mossy Cove, Palms Estates and near the Istokpoga Marina. Ford said he also needed to choose a dump site for an estimated 25,000 cubic feet of sand and muck that would be taken out of the canals. The state budget has $800,000 slated for the maintenance work, and he said he'll try to get some of the needed permits for the projects next month if the county commissioners approve the project in today's meeting. ...more

May 20, 2008

Twenty-seven people hit the streets Saturday, clearing more than 1,000 pounds of trash from Gunn Highway. ...more

February 13, 2008

The county's library board will review a request to rename the Seminole Heights Branch Library for local historian and library advocate Steve Gluckman. ...more

January 30, 2008

About 80 people attended an impromptu meeting of the Keystone Civic Association last week to discuss upcoming amendments to its community plan. ...more

January 19, 2008

A chain saw chewed through the doomed maple while two men held ropes secured to its trunk. ...more

January 17, 2008

Feb. 23 will still be a dog day afternoon at the 61st annual Pasco County Fair. ...more

January 1, 2008

WHO: Local Women Marines Association members BACK IN DOLLIE'S DAY: Fresh out of high school in Chicago and only 18, Dollie Pobozny was in the first group of women trainees at Camp Lejeune. The Marines moved basic training for women to the base in North Carolina in 1943. ...more

December 3, 2007

SEBRING — Some of you already found your new phone book lying on the driveway, so now what are you going to do with your old one? If you're planning to throw it away, the schools and some homeowners associations around the county would rather you left it with one of them. And not with anyone else, either. "We have the telephone book challenge with the homeowner associations as well as the schools," said Sherri Cooper, the coordinator of Keep Highlands Beautiful which also runs the county's recycling program. ...more

November 26, 2007