Local News Headlines 6-19-25

If you use Memorial Drive to go back and forth between Avon Park and Sebring, a traffic note – don’t. Road work begins today on the Avon Park leg of Memorial Drive. The road will be closed for three or four days, weather permitting. Heading north, you’ll be routed down College Drive over to 27. Southbound, you’ll be snaked back down Lake Lotela Drive onto the Panther Parkway.

It was a rough Friday afternoon on the Sebring Parkway when an accident at the corner of the Parkway and Scenic Highway had traffic tied up in both directions for an hour or so. One of the drivers needed transport to an area hospital in the wreck.

If you’re in the City of Sebring, your fire assessment rate is probably going up. Last week, the City Council authorized a maximum increase of up to just under $35 for an average residence. That’s the amount the fire assessment went up last year – Council members say they probably won’t go that high, but $25 appears likely. A preliminary resolution setting next year’s rates is expected at the Council’s June 17th meeting.

And “one more for the road” might have a different meaning if some downtown eating establishments have their way. The Council was asked last week how an open container law could work allowing customers to take alcoholic beverages out of the bars and into Circle Park and spoke streets, perhaps extending down to the waterfront. The 301 is making the request.

A portion of the old Harder Hall Golf Course has been essentially laying fallow since the sale of the property a few years ago, and its Pembroke Pines-based owner hasn’t been responsive to the building fine balance on the land. Code violations total over $775,000, and the city can keep piling those fines up for twenty years. Yes, city foreclosure is an option. The property in question is the northern half of the former course – the southern half is under active redevelopment as a housing development.