Fort Lauderdale

The debate over a long-running gun show in Fort Lauderdale’s Holiday Park has carried over into the new year. 

Fort Lauderdale's troublesome, aging sewage system just got a major update, according to a new city report. 

A 30-inch force main--a main support sewage line--that runs underneath SW 2nd St. started to repeatedly break near the end of 2016. So, the Public Works Department's Go Big, Go Fast campaign started with an emergency declaration to replace the pipe at the end of September this year. 

In 2016 alone, The Broward County Housing Council counted more than 2,300 homeless people living inside county lines. 

So, the civic and business group Tower Forum, in Fort Lauderdale, hosted a panel for local business people to get a glimpse into what’s being done at the county level to solve homelessness, especially in Downtown Fort Lauderdale. 

Fort Lauderdale is upping its fire rescue game. Last Friday the city christened  Fireboat 49, a high tech response boat for the fire rescue team.

Fireboat 49 is replacing a much smaller vessel that the Fort Lauderdale Fire Department was using to respond to fires and rescue missions on the water. That could be anything from looking for something or someone underwater to helping out a cruise ship. 

There are nearly two million gun licenses in Florida but figuring out exactly how many guns are in the state is a more challenging figure to extract. Florida, like most states, does not require gun owners to register their weapons. 

On May 19, Fort Lauderdale police officers and city workers showed up without notice at Stranahan Park with dozens of blue trash bins, a front-end loader and a dump truck. They ordered all the homeless living there to put their stuff in the bins; the rest of the stuff was scooped up by the loader and thrown in the dump truck.

Monday is the 25th anniversary of Fort Lauderdale’s Sun Trolley system, and the celebration promises to be a multi-sensory experience.

The eye-catching red-and-yellow trolleys run on eight routes through Fort Lauderdale, taking riders to the beach, shopping and work. By the end of the month, they'll have a new app and website to make seeing routes and tracking transit easier.

The man accused of killing five people and wounding six more in a shooting at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport earlier this month told FBI agents he had been communicating with people involved with or inspired by the Islamic State in online chat rooms.

FBI Special Agent Michael Ferlazzo took the stand at Esteban Santiago’s detention hearing Tuesday morning in federal court in Fort Lauderdale. Ferlazzo said Santiago told him in an interview at around 10:30 pm on the day of the shooting that he had been communicating with Islamic State supporters on the dark web.

The City of Fort Lauderdale may get a new outdoor concert venue along its riverfront. Levitt Pavilions, a national nonprofit organization, recently selected the city to receive seed funding and technical support to develop a public performing arts space in Esplanade Park.

  This week on the Florida Roundup, we discuss the week's news with the area's top journalists.

LEGISLATIVE SESSION