Here's some stuff about yesterday you might use to start a conversation today, because everybody already saw your Valentine's Day activities on Instabook or whatever.
Turns out the city of Clearwater's new logo, rolled out a few months ago, cost $200,000 in taxpayer money. Which isn't actually a screamingly huge amount of cash for a brand makeover — the city could've paid a million and ended up with the words "Pier & Traffic" superimposed over a distressed anchor.
Polk County's Southeastern University will be the site of a pilot program in which staff members will be trained to carry concealed firearms and react to active shooter situations. Somebody's gonna get shot over whether Thoreau expanded or simply amplified Emerson's views on the self in, like, two weeks. (Bonus: Typical "shoot 'em dead" quote from Sheriff Grady "We Ran Out Of Bullets" Judd.)
Some Tampa Heights residents want to push the Good Samaritan Inn, which provides a cheap place for transients and the homeless to stay, out of the neighborhood, citing crime, drug use, littering, loitering, etc. — basically, all the things people always cite when they've decided they want to make the homeless problem somebody else's problem. No good ever comes from sweeping poverty under the rug. You know what good comes from? A fucking compromise in which residents and management worked together to make a place like this something everyone should be proud to have in their neighborhood.
And finally, kudos to the Jacksonville City Council, which updated a city ordinance to include banning discrimination "on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity and expression." Think about that. Jacksonville. Every city in the state that hasn't already done the same should be mortified.
This article appears in Feb 9-16, 2017.