Legislators get warm welcome at delegation hearing
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Legislators get warm welcome at delegation hearing

The annual legislative delegation hearing in Apalachicola’s county commission chambers is usually filled with polite praise for the state senator and state representative working on Franklin County’s issues before the state. After all, they’re bringing home the berries for lots of hungry constituents, and there was no shortage of pointed requests for fiscal acorns that…

Alive and twinkling
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Alive and twinkling

Panhandle Players open transformative season The Panhandle Players may produce plays but they are not playing around, with last week’s four-day run of “Rivers Edge” vivid proof of that. I’ll get to the play in a few paragraphs, but first, picture the whole of the Chapman Auditorium space transformed, both permanently with the recent removal…

New atmosphere for Panhandle Players’ ‘River’s Edge’
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New atmosphere for Panhandle Players’ ‘River’s Edge’

There’s a surprise in store for those lucky enough to catch this weekend’s performance of the Panhandle Players’ production at the Chapman Theatre in Apalachicola. That’s because there won’t be the old school auditorium seats. They’re gone. What there is instead is the surprise, along the lines of dinner theater seating and homemade desserts by…

‘Sustainability’ raised with Weems proposed expansion
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‘Sustainability’ raised with Weems proposed expansion

The proposed expansion of Weems Memorial Hospital, now expected to cost anywhere from $16 million to $23 million, was center stage at last week’s county commission meeting. Weems CEO David Walker, with representatives of Birmingham, Alabama-based healthcare architects TRO Jung | Brannen attending online, presented details of a pair of design options to the county…

Apalachicola keeps millage rate unchanged
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Apalachicola keeps millage rate unchanged

Blessed with a significant growth in its tax base, Apalachicola city commissioners have decided to keep the millage rate unchanged at 8.3457 mills. Because the tax base has grown from $204.9 million this year to about $236.5 million in the upcoming 2023-24 fiscal year, the city will have about $1.92 million in ad valorem tax…

Apalachicola seeking time capsule-worthy items
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Apalachicola seeking time capsule-worthy items

Apalachicola’s historic Middlebrook building, located at the corner of Water Street and Avenue E, is currently undergoing extensive repair and restoration to preserve and protect this historic landmark damaged during the 2018 Hurricane Michael.  To commemorate the work and the history of this iconic landmark, the city is putting together a time capsule that will…

Secret compartments inside of ourselves
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Secret compartments inside of ourselves

Aboard my boat “Lily,” we take folks on eco-tours up the Apalachicola River into the pristine 246,000-acre  estuarine reserve on average of some 125 times a year. We’ve operated for 13 years. My license allows us to take six folks so let’s say we average three folks per cruise. If you multiply that out, that’s…

Military tradition flourishing in Franklin
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Military tradition flourishing in Franklin

It’s a Florida county with a rich military tradition, dating back to the men who served in both the Union and Confederate armies buried in its cemeteries. From the heroes of World War I and II, to those trained in the 1940s at Camp Gordon Johnston for landings in the Pacific, to the groundbreaking U-2…