Tuesday Briefing: School Taxes, Texting While Driving, Palm Harbor Golf Fare, Blivets

Today: Partly cloudy with a 40 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Highs in the lower 90s, lows in the 70s. Details here.
Drought Index is at 98.
Today’s tides: at the beaches, at the Intracoastal Waterway.
Today’s document from the National Archives.
The OED’s Word of the Day: wayang kulit, n..
The Live Community Calendar
Today’s jail bookings.

Today’s Briefing: Quick Links

• First Light
• In Flagler and Palm Coast
• Flagler Jail Bookings and Sheriff’s Crime Reports
• Announcements
• In State Government
• In Coming Days in Flagler, Palm Coast and Beyond
• The Day’s Best Reads
• Fact-Checking the Knaves
• Palm Coast Construction and Development
• Local Road and Interstate Construction
• Cultural Coda

In Flagler and Palm Coast:

Note: all government meetings noticed below are free and open to the public unless otherwise indicated. Many can be heard or seen live through each agency’s website.

The Sheriff’s daily incident reports and jail bookings are posted here.

The Palm Coast City Council holds a 9 a.m. workshop at City Hall in Town Center. On the agenda: a presentation on the public works master plan (the city is planning a $6 million reconstruction and expansion of the public works grounds on U.S. 1). Commissioners will discuss the city’s capital improvement budget for the coming year, and the next phase in a “traffic optimization” plan, which has so far cost half a million dollars, and will add about $160,000 more. Council members will also discuss a deal that would have the Golden Lion restaurant of Flagler Beach manager the food concessions at Palm Harbor Golf Club, the city’;s troubled facility. It is uncertain where the elephant in the room will roam during this meeting, if at all: the council is not scheduled to meet in special session to decide Manager Jim Landon’s fate until Aug. 3.

The Flagler County School Board holds a public hearing at 5:15 p.m. in board chambers at the Government Services Building, Bunnell, to tentatively adopt the school property tax rate for next year. The school board’s role is exclusively ceremonial: it has no say in the property tax rate, which is set by the state Legislature and essentially forced on local districts. The hearing is ultimately meaningless, as public say, if there is any (there usually is not, residents having caught on to the futility years ago) will not–cannot–change the outcome one way or the other. But state law requires the hearing to be held, and requires the district to spend money advertising it, and using up its board members time and that of staffers to go through the motions.

Announcements:

Section of St. Joe Walkway to close temporarily for reconstruction

An approximately ½-mile section of St. Joe Walkway – one of Palm Coast’s most popular trails – will be closed beginning Monday, July 24, to allow for reconstruction of the multi-use pathway. The portion to be closed is from eastbound Palm Coast Parkway to the Intracoastal Waterway, in the vicinity of Canopy Walk. Detour signs will be posted for bicyclists and pedestrians, taking them on a nearby trail route to Palm Harbor Parkway and the Hammock Bridge trailhead. Access along the Intracoastal Waterway between Hammock Bridge and Waterfront Park will remain open for now. However, as the project progresses, a portion of that section of the trail will be closed temporarily. The pathway must be reconstructed because it has cracks and damage from tree roots. City of Palm Coast crews will do most of the work, and then the repaving will be done by Halifax Paving. The project is expected to take several weeks. The City of Palm Coast appreciates the patience to trail-users as we complete this important trail reconstruction project. For more information, call Palm Coast Customer Service at 386-986-2360.

In Florida and in State Government:

Note: Some proceedings below can be followed live on the Florida Channel. Most legislative proceedings can be followed through the Senate or House websites.

PRIMARY ELECTIONS IS SD 40, HD 116: Special primary elections will be held in Miami-Dade County’s Senate District 40 and House District 116. Republican Frank Artiles resigned from the Senate District 40 seat in April, prompting the need for a special election. Republican Jose Feliz Diaz resigned from the House District 116 seat to run in the Senate district, leading to the special election in his House district. Diaz, former Sen. Alex Diaz de la Portilla and attorney Lorenzo Palomares are running in the Republican primary in Senate District 40, while former state Rep. Ana Rivas Logan and 2014 lieutenant-governor candidate Annette Taddeo are running in the Democratic primary. In House District 116, Jose Mallea and Daniel Anthony Perez are running in the Republican primary, with the winner facing Democrat Gabriela Mayaudon in the Sept. 26 general election. Polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Financial aid: The Education Estimating Conference will analyze issues related to student financial aid. (1:30 p.m., 117 Knott Building, the Capitol.)

Texting while driving: State Rep. Emily Slosberg, D-Boca Raton, will appear at a Boca Raton City Council meeting as part of an effort to change state law to make texting while driving a primary offense. Such a change would allow police to pull over motorists for violating the state’s ban on texting while driving. Currently, drivers can only be cited if they are stopped for other reasons. (6 p.m., Boca Raton City Hall, 201 West Palmetto Park Road, Boca Raton.)

In Coming Days in Palm Coast, Flagler and the Occasional Beyond:

The Day’s Best Reads:

Palm Coast Construction and Development Progress Reports

The following is an update of ongoing permitting, construction and development projects in Palm Coast, through July 14 (the city administration’s full week in review is here):

Click to access development-july-14-2017.pdf

Road and Interstate Construction:

• Florida Department of Transportation Road Project List

Cultural Coda:

Beethoven String Quartet No. 14 in C-sharp minor, Op. 131, Afiara Quartet

Previous Codas:

• K.D. Lang: The Mind of Love
• World’s Oldest Violin: Marco Rizzi Performs Schumann’s Sonata No. 2 on a 1566 Amati Violin
• Mark Knopfler on Guitars
• Bach’s Little Fugue in G minor, Performed by the Canadian Brass
• The Adventures of Henry Thoreau: A Young Man’s Unlikely Path to Walden Pond
• Macklemore Feat Skylar Grey: Glorious
• Edward Luce On the Retreat of Western Liberalism in the Trump Era
• Why Don’t All Instruments Sound The Same?
• Joachim Horsley’s “Beethoven in Havana”: What the Piano Can Do
• Bojan Cicic and Richard Egarr: Giovanni Carbonelli’s Violin Sonata No. 1
• Voyager: The 116 images NASA wants aliens to see
• Bohemian Rhapsody: Brooklyn Duo and Ft. Dover Quartet
• Down in the River to Pray: University of Texas Tuba/Euphonium Studio
• Brahms : Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor, op. 25
• The Reluctant Fundamentalist: Mohsin Hamid in Conversation with Akhil Sharma
• “The Day After” (1983)
• Rui Arayama Performs Domenico Scarlatti’s Sonatas K.427 & K.455
• Villa-Lobos: Bachianas Brasileiras
• Angelina Jordan, 10 Years Old Norwegian, Sings the Blues: I Put A Spell On You
• Joseph Bodin de Boismortier (1689-1755), Concerto in B Minor for five Recorders Op. 15 Nr. 4, Abateva
• Introduction to Bullshit
• Chopin: 24 Etudes for Piano Op.10 , Op 25, Lukas Genjušas, Piano
• Alike: The Best Short Film Ever
• Fauré’s Requiem, Performed by the Ensemble Orchestral de Paris, Choeur Accentus
• Arthur Rubinstein Performs Saint-Saëns’s Piano Concerto No 2 in G minor, Op 22
• Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 5, Reformation: Jérémie Rhorer Conducts the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra
• C.P.E. Bach Keyboard Sonata in F sharp minor, Wq 52 4
• Boccherini: Quintet with Guitar G 448 D-Major
• Jean-Baptiste Poyard Performs Telemann’s Violin Fantasia n°1
• Eudora Welty Reads “A Worn Path”
• Francis Poulenc at the piano
• Antonin Dvořák: Romance for Violin and Orchestra performed by Tanja Sonc
• Joseph Haydn’s Symphony Nr. 66 in F major, Herbert Blomstedt, cond.
• Sarah Chang Plays Elgar’s Damn Romantic Salut d’amour, Op. 12
• Beethoven: Symphony No. 7, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Iván Fischer, cond.
• Rimsky-Korsakov, Russian Easter Festival Overture, Op. 36
• Händel: Keyboard Suite HWV 428, Daria van den Bercken, piano
• Haydn: Piano Trio No. 39 in G major Hob. XV/25
• Mozart: Ave Verum Corpus, Leonard Bernstein
• What is McCarthyism? And how did it happen?
• The Corrs: Toss the Feathers
• Peter Falk’s Acceptance Speech for 1972 Emmy, for Colombo
• How Did Beethoven Compose His 9th Symphony After He Went Completely Deaf?