Stet News🚨 Four smaller counties have gotten the most of the first $60 million in payouts from a $250 million Florida fund created to help local law enforcement agencies crack down on illegal immigration. They are the sheriff’s offices in Lee County ($9.9 million), Polk County ($9.7 million), Osceola County ($9.4 million) and Escambia County ($5.9 million). Palm Beach County is sixth at $1.99 million. (Orlando Sentinel via South Florida Sun-Sentinel $$$)
🔒 City Cellar Wine Bar & Grill, an original tenant in West Palm Beach’s CityPlace, will close in late spring, resulting in more than 90 layoffs. (South Florida Business Journal and The Palm Beach Post $$$)
🚪 Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick could be expelled from Congress after a House Ethics subcommittee found Friday she committed 25 violations, including breaking campaign finance laws. The Democrat who represents portions of Palm Beach and Broward counties is running for a fourth term after filling the seat held by the late Alcee Hastings. She denies wrongdoing. (Sun-Sentinel $$$)
🌊 The long-shuttered Jerome Golden Center for Behavioral Health on 45th Street in West Palm Beach sold for $11.5 million to the owners of the Breakers Palm Beach Resort. Sunview Medical of New Jersey bought the property from the nonprofit owners in 2020 but lost it to foreclosure last year. The Breakers, which recently bought land for employee housing in West Palm Beach, said it would demolish the hospital but did not announce what it would build. (South Florida Business Journal $$$)
👨🏼⚖️ The Florida Center for Government Accountability and its investigative publication, the Florida Trident, have been granted a limited right to intervene in court proceedings related to a secret grand jury presentment in the Hope Florida investigation. The limited purpose is to advocate over whether the court proceedings should continue to be closed. (Florida Trident)
🧪 Jupiter-based Myosin Therapeutics, a cancer research spinoff from the Herbert Wertheim UF Scripps Institute for Biomedical Innovation and Technology, secured a $2 million Florida Department of Health grant to support clinical trials to evaluate its treatment for patients with newly diagnosed glioblastoma.(South Florida Business Journal $$$)
🎈 West Palm Beach based-Ondas Inc. is paying $150 million for World View Enterprises, a business that designs, manufactures and operates high-altitude balloons for remote sensing and surveillance. Ondas, based downtown at the Esperante building, also is partnering with software giant Palantir Technologies to develop and deploy artificial intelligence-enabled capabilities for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions. (South Florida Business Journal $$$)
😙 Whistle while you work? For professional whistler David Hall, formerly of Lake Worth Beach, puckering up is part of the job. He wore a top hat and whistled for tips in San Francisco, delivered whistling telegrams in Berkeley, Calif., and, in 1983, set the first Guinness world record for marathon whistling, a lip-numbing 25 straight hours. (Lake Worth Beach Independent)
Editor’s note: This item was corrected to remove an errant reference to Hall whistling for a “Peanuts” character.
🎙️ “Top of Mind Florida,” the podcast by Michael Williams and Brian Crowley, meets with Patrick Franklin, president & CEO of the Urban League of Palm Beach County. Franklin shares details of his career from geophysics training to 24 years of community leadership in South Florida and breaks down what the Urban League is doing and what’s at stake in the months to come. (Listen now; watch after 4 pm today)
