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The South Florida Roundup

The effect of Uvalde on Cruz's jury selection, COVID and the economy in South Florida, and a Surfside inspired law

Workers pump water out of the foundation of the former Champlain Towers South building, Thursday, May 12, 2022, in Surfside, Fla. The Eighty Seven Park building is to the south. Parties associated with the building and others have agreed to a settlement of $997 million to compensate the victims and families of those killed when the Champlain Towers South building collapsed nearly a year ago. (AP Photo/Marta Lavandier)
The Associated Press
Workers pump water out of the foundation of the former Champlain Towers South building, Thursday, May 12, 2022, in Surfside, Fla. The Eighty Seven Park building is to the south. Parties associated with the building and others have agreed to a settlement of $997 million to compensate the victims and families of those killed when the Champlain Towers South building collapsed nearly a year ago. (AP Photo/Marta Lavandier)

The shooting in Uvalde, Texas, had an immediate impact on jury selection for Nikolas Cruz' trial. A rise in COVID cases in South Florida has brought only masking recommendations as The Federal Reserve seeks to lower inflation and keep the economy growing. What will be the impact of the Surfside-inspired law passed by the Florida Legislature?

Last week’s school shooting at an elementary school in Texas found its way inside the Fort Lauderdale courtroom.

The courtroom in Fort Lauderdale is where lawyers and a judge are trying to pick a jury to decide if another school shooter lives in prison for the rest of his life or is put to death.

Nikolas Cruz has admitted to killing 17 people and hurting 17 others at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland.

WLRN's Broward Reporter Gerard Albert III said this situation isn't new in the court. This topic was brought up after the Buffalo shooting.

"Before the jurors were brought in, the defense attorney asked for a second to talk about this," he said. "She was very emotional. She had to stop and pause many times to stop from crying."

The first group of jurors that came in weren't asked about the Texas shooting directly, but one potential juror brought it up and mentioned that they all knew what had occurred the day before, Albert said.

The trial is still set to begin in the last week of June.

COVID on the rise in South Florida again, but what’s being done?

South Florida is expected to see record numbers of visitors for the Memorial Day Weekend. At the same time, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is warning about increasing COVID cases and hospitalizations in South Florida.

Cases are going up, and hospital capacity is reducing. According to the CDC, there are high levels of COVID in South Florida and Monroe County. They advise we take precautions before things get worse.

The positivity rate in Miami-Dade is quite high at 20%. That means almost 1 in every 5 tests will come back positive.

"It means it's spreading pretty easily, and that's why the CDC is recommending people wear masks indoors and in public regardless of whether they're vaccinated," said Daniel Chang, the Miami Herald's health care reporter.

The median age of people who are coming back with confirmed cases now is about 44 years old, but there are also a large number of children and young adults who are also returning with positive tests.

Chang said about 13% of 5- to 17-year-olds and 21% of young adults between 18 and 34 years old.These numbers have been gathered over the past few weeks.

According to the agency’s COVID-19 Community Level, South Florida is at a high-risk level, and that comes with the recommendation to wear a mask when indoors in public.

However, that is a recommendation, not a mandate, as local leaders have decided not to enforce another mask requirement.

Chang spoke to Broward County’s Mayor Michael Undine and said he doesn't believe in mask mandates anymore and doesn't envision a return to masks. He also said that Miami-Dade County's Mayor Daniella Levine-Cava also shares the sentiments.

However, the County Administrator in Broward issued a memo sometime in April strongly recommending that people wear masks in county buildings and on county property.

“Similar to the other issues that we’ve seen with the pandemic, people aren’t all speaking with one voice, and so it makes it kind of hard to decipher the message,” Change said.

South Florida’s economic future

Inflation backed off its recent high in April, but prices continue increasing at their fastest pace in more than a generation. That is helping increase interest rates. Borrowing costs have jumped, including for mortgages.

The unemployment rate is at historic lows, but worries about an economic recession are building.

Raphael Bostic, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, is comfortable with the current pace of higher interest rates from the Federal Reserve. South Florida is a part of the region this federal bank oversees.

“We are in a really uncharted space in terms of how the economy has progressed and where it's come from,” he said. “And I think that we are moving towards a neutral stance away from our emergency posture much faster than we have in the past 20 years.”

Bostic isn’t entirely concerned about a recession in the next 12 months because of the economy’s gathering momentum. He said that job growth, on a monthly basis, has been averaging about 500,000 a month for the past 10 months, which means that slowing down off of that would still leave the economy in a strong place.

He hopes that we've seen peak inflation in the U.S. Bostic sits on the Federal Open Market Committee of the Federal Reserve and sets interest rates. The committee said it's taken action to reduce inflation in the economy and they hope to see it reduce even more in the months to come.

The service and hospitality industries are dominant in the U.S. and South Florida, and Bostic said that a reduction in inflation will help reduce the gap between the demand for jobs and the workers available. Reducing this gap will help the hospitality industry to keep rebounding.

Surfside inspired condo-bill passes through Florida legislature

Almost a year after the collapse of the Champlain Towers South condo building in Surfside, Florida lawmakers responded. Florida condo buildings will be subject to new inspections and new requirements for associations to sock away money for important maintenance.

For condo buildings at least three stories tall, they will have to be inspected 30 years after opening. For buildings within three miles of a coastline, it will be 25 years after they are built. And for each, an inspection will have to be done every decade thereafter.

After the inspection is done, the buildings will have to collect the reserves necessary for whatever structural component was outlined in the reserve study, said Representative Daniel Perez, the sponsor of this bill.

Part of this bill is the requirement of a reserve study every 10 years.

There wasn’t a study done on the financial impact on an average condominium owner in Florida because currently, the Department of Business and Professional Regulation does not have an outline of how many buildings there are in each condominium association.

“In the bill, each association has to notify DBPR how many buildings there are within their condominium association that falls within the three stories or more,” Perez said.

This roll call will help DBPR keep condominium associations accountable. However, they haven’t done it yet, so the individual financial impact cannot be stated yet.

Eric Glazer of Glazer & Associates believes that this law, with one major flaw, has done what needed to be done 30 years ago.

The main flaw he sees with the bill is that it removed the education requirement for condo association directors and officers to get certified while warning directors that if they fail to follow the law, it'll be a breach of their fiduciary duty. Glazer believes this education is necessary for saving lives.

Alongside the flaw of the bill, he sees the future of condominiums as a concerning one.

“We have an inflation problem, insurance rates are doubling or tripling … and what everybody is forgetting about, is January 31st, 2024, your condo better either have sprinklers or an engineered light safety system," he said.

He also said the days of moving to Florida and living off of your social security check are over. He also predicts that thousands of senior citizen Floridians will be foreclosed on in the future.

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Natu Tweh is WLRN's Morning Edition Producer. He also reports on general news out of South Florida.