Things To Do In SW Florida

By Allison Martin, Bankrate.com

Summer is winding down, and it’s almost time for back-to-school shopping. If your state offers a sales tax holiday — fewer than 20 states do this year — you might be able to give your wallet a bit of a break.

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And that’s true whether or not you have children: These sales-tax holidays can be a good time to buy new clothes, a computer or other items.

Sales tax holidays: How they work

Many states offer their sales tax holidays in August. Most states limit the types of items that are eligible for the sales tax holiday — clothing is the most common qualified purchase — and they usually put a dollar limit on how much of the purchase will be tax-free. read more

Rarely have we seen a day when the Florida East Coast Railway has publicly spoken ill of Brightline, its higher speed passenger rail partner in South and Central Florida.

Nor has it openly uttered objections against a planned commuter rail line Brightline envisions operating in concert with Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties over the FECR-owned corridor east of Interstate 95.

Until recently.

In a sharply worded lawsuit filled last month in Miami-Dade Circuit Court, the venerable freight carrier based in Jacksonville, and owner of the 351-stretch of rail between Miami and the northeast Florida city, alleges that Brightline kept the FECR in the dark when it started speaking with county officials about a possible commuter line that would run through all three counties, over 85 miles between Miami and Jupiter.

The lawsuit was first reported by the Miami Herald.

The Coastal Commuter Link idea is an outgrowth of a plan researched and coordinated by the Florida Department of Transportation starting in 2003, decades after passenger rail service along the line founded by oil baron Henry Flagler ceased in 1968. read more

An enormous master-planned community in Kissimmee is moving closer to construction after years of effort, driven by Puerto Rico’s largest mall developer in its entry to the Florida market.

The company, Empresas Fonalledas, has spent $70 million through its affiliate, Plaza Lakes LLC, over the last two decades assembling the nearly 900 acres along Simpson Road for the community known as Hilliard Isle. Pulte has been involved as the homebuilding partner for the project since 2022 and has secured zoning entitlements for the mixed-use development with a marina on East Lake Toho.

Craig Holland, the city’s development director, called Hilliard Isle the Kissimmee’s “last hurrah,” according to a report in GrowthSpotter.

“It’s our last big undeveloped piece of property,” he told Osceola Realtors last month. “We’re looking at 3,000 dwelling units, approximately. That includes single-family, townhouses, and multifamily, and about 125,000 square feet of commercial with a town center vibe. And this is located between BVL and East Lake Toho. This is the easternmost portion of the city. It has good access to pretty much everything.” read more

By BERNARD CONDON

NEW YORK (AP) — A public document filed by a company that just hired President Donald Trump’s two oldest sons as advisers included a sentence early Monday that said it hoped to benefit from grants and other incentives from the federal government, which their father happens to lead.

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But when The Associated Press asked the Trump family business about the apparent conflict of interest, the document was revised and the line taken out.

Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. are getting “founder shares” worth millions of dollars in New America Acquisition 1 Corp., a company with no operating business that hopes to fill that hole by purchasing an American company that can play “a meaningful role in revitalizing domestic manufacturing,” according to to the filing. The president has geared his trade policy toward boosting manufacturing in the U.S. read more