Protestors spent the night outside St Petersburg City Hall to bring attention to the lack of affordable housing and the homeless, and plan to speak up at this morning’s City Council meeting. The St Petersburg Tenants Union organized the “sleep in”. St Petersburg does have a tenant’s bill of rights, and at Tuesday’s Pinellas County Commission meeting, they approved a tenant bill of rights as well. In Hillsborough County, Commissioners to require landlords to give 60 days’ notice to tentants if their rent goes up more than 5%., and property managers must give 30 days’ notice if a lease is not being renewed.

Law enforcement in Lake Wales is mourning the loss of K-9 Officer Max who died in the line of duty Wednesday. Max and his partner Officer Jared Joyner were tracking a suspect who shot Max. That person was also shot and died. Max was honored with a police procession led by Officer Joyner in their vehicle.

Another Central Avenue business closed this week. Punky’s Bar and Grill was an LGBTQ-owned business that was well known for their charitable

Public schools will be opening next week, and there’s a desperate need for teachers. The Florida Department of Education has 9,000 positions open statewide, with Hillsborough County among those with the most positions open with a total of 1,400, some 700 of those teachers. This is, by the way, the final week to take advantage of tax free shopping for certain back to school items, with the full list here. The last day is this Sunday.

While playing for the Bucs last season, Tom Brady was talking to the Miami Dolphins. Now the Dolphins are being hit with major sanctions for violating league police for doing so. The lose their first-round pick in the upcoming 2023 draft along with a third-round pick in 2024. It doesn’t end there; owner Stephen Ross has been suspended until Oct. 17th and banned from all league committees and fined $1.5 million. The Dolphin’s vice chairman/limited partner, Bruce Beel, who also happens to he a friend of Brady’s was hit with a $500,000 fine and is banned from league meeting for the rest of the year.

The winner of the Mega Millions jackpot may not be from Florida, but there are least five Floridians who may not be at work today. Three winning tickets sold in Florida were good for two million dollars, and two tickets sold in Florida were good for a million dollars. The one winning ticket that had all the winning numbers was sold in Illinois at a Speedway gas station on East Touhy Avenue in Des Plaines, Illinois, and was worth $1.337 billion. The station will get a 1% commission on that jackpot. Two of those million dollar winners were bought in the Tampa Bay area.

It’s now official - July was the hottest month on record. Tampa’s average temp in July was 86.3 degrees, breaking the old record of 85.8 from September of 2018. Dryer conditions thanks to the Saharan dust also kept the threat of any thunderstorms forming. This week’s Dove Tampa Bay forecast from 10 Tampa Bay does have an increasing change for rain.

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