GAINSWave Therapy in Clearwater, FL

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CLEARWATER, Fla. — SeaWorld Orlando said a dolphin that suffered injuries from a crab trap in Clearwater has made remarkable progress.

In July, lifeguards and Clearwater Fire and Rescue located the dolphin near Pier 60. He suffered injuries from a crab trap and was unresponsive. Rescuers could not locate his mother.

"A lifeguard noticed this object kind of bouncing in the waterways and went out to see what it was," said Ashley Killo, a SeaWorld Animal Care Specialist.

NOAA officials deemed the animal "unreleasable" due to its age. The dolphin could not communicate or hunt for its own food.

Ashley Killo, a SeaWorld Animal Care Specialist, said the dolphin continued to hit major milestones over the past six months.

"He came to us roughly under 60 pounds. He's now over 100," said Killo. "You can still see some of the scaring on the fluke itself where he's missing part of it and then of course, you can still see some of the indentations where the line was wrapped around his peduncle so the part that leads to his flukes."

The dolphin named "Ridgeway" is able to swim once again. When he first arrived at SeaWorld for care, he was in critical condition and was unable to swim. He drinks special formula from a bottle. Once he starts eating fish, the bottle feeds will gradually be reduced.

Ridgeway has been moved to a dolphin nursery pool in the park. He socializes with other dolphins, including adult females and also plays with other calves close to his age.

"He was put in our dolphin nursery pool in the park for anyone to see. He’s out there. He's swimming around. He has teamed up with some of our older females, which is exactly what dolphins are going to do," said Killo.

Killo said Ridgeway's story serves as a reminder for people to pick up their trash like fishing lines and crab traps.

"If you're fishing, don't leave your fishing line, don't cut your fishing line. If you have crab traps, make sure you're coming back for them. It's all of these things humans can do that can make a world of difference for these animals," said Killo.

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PINELLAS COUNTY, Fla. — If you live in Clearwater and recycle, turns out nothing you’ve sorted in the last six months has been recycled. It's all just thrown out with the regular garbage.

Recycling for the city comes to the Solid Waste Plant in Clearwater, where it's supposed to be sorted and taken to a recycling vendor in Tampa, but that hasn’t been happening.

City officials say they learned of the problem after concerned residents posted to social media.

The city manager's office says they asked about the complaints, and Bryant Johnson with the solid waste department assured them that recyclables were being properly processed.

However, after investigating further, the city learned nothing had been recycled since June.

On Monday, Johnson resigned from his role with the city.

"For residents, this has to be disheartening. They’ve been doing their part by sorting and rinsing things and doing what they believed was right for the environment and the city has not done its part and that’s not fair to the residents," said Joelle Castelli, city of Clearwater spokesperson.

The city is still investigating the exact reason why the recycling was taken to the Pinellas County Solid Waste Disposal Complex and burned as waste to energy with the rest of the garbage instead of being recycled.

Clearwater resident Tony Fantilli who recycles regularly, says he’s not happy to hear it.

"I’d have to say I'm disappointed because it was a dropped ball, and if it was intentional, that’s just not OK," said Fantilli.

Cities across the nation have been struggling to find recycling solutions ever since China stopped buying recycled materials from the U.S. in 2017.

The city of Clearwater says now they’re having to pay a vendor to take their recyclables.

Paying $150 a ton, when before, they only paid $67 a ton and had profit sharing.

City officials say they are looking at reimbursement options for those who paid for recycling since June.

But for now, they’re encouraging people to still sort recycling because they are able to recycle some of it.

"We’re recycling as much as we can with them currently and we’re looking for a more long-term solution with another vendor," said Castelli.

Copyright 2023 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

It’s clear skies ahead for FlyUSA and Paradise Ventures as the partners got the green light to become the new operator of the Clearwater Airpark.

The group received unanimous approval from the city council Thursday evening to ink an initial five-year lease term through 2028, with one five-year unilateral renewal option, to become the operator of the 47-acre airpark at 1000 N. Hercules Ave.

The decision comes after the 22-year lease terminated last year and the city was garnering interest from multiple firms seeking to become the new fixed-base operator. There was an offer from Clearwater Airpark Inc., which is connected to David King, the now-former operator, and a joint offer from FlyUSA, a full-service private aviation firm that specializes in on-demand air charter, and Paradise Ventures, a commercial real estate development company that owns the Sundial shopping complex in St. Petersburg.

Eric Gandy, the city’s marine and aviation director, reminded the council that the 80-year-old airpark, which badly needs repairs, was facing the decision of either operating the airpark at a loss or shuttering the airpark if a new operator didn’t step in.

“It was a herculean task to navigate this and ensure we had a lease agreement that was a significant improvement from what we operate under now,” Gandy said. “Keeping this airpark as a public-use airport is critical to obtaining FDOT [Florida Department of Transportation] funding, number one, and it’s critical to countywide emergency management.”

Gandy said FlyUSA and Paradise Ventures plan to pump $2.4 million of capital improvements into the airpark, which includes 40,000 square feet of additional corporate hangars, and would establish FlyUSA’s corporate offices at the property.

“This is difficult because I’ve had a relationship with King [the previous operator] for a long time and respect him. I do think we need to get reinvestment into the airpark, we want the airpark to exist because it’s an amenity for a lot of our citizens to have planes,” Clearwater Mayor Frank Hibbard said during the meeting.

“Economically, it would probably be better to close it and put something new there to create more jobs, more taxes and everything else, which would obviously go to referendum … but like our marinas, recreation centers and libraries, they are all elements within the city that create our quality of life,” he said.

Under the lease, it states the group must ensure the flight training operations remain while mitigating noise pollution and disturbance to nearby residential communities.

FlyUSA and Paradise Ventures must also provide the current active tenants leasing space for aircraft with opportunities to continue leasing space.

The airpark currently houses Tampa Bay Flight School, Vertical Flight and Tampa Bay Aviation, maintenance and operation services, and aircraft from private owners.

The flight school operations were a major topic among public speakers and council members.

“If we had an RFP that made arbitrary restrictions on the flight school, number of plane operations and restrictions that limited the ability of an entity to operate it, we would’ve had no respondents,” Gandy said, explaining how the RFP and lease could not get into those specifics and the city wanted a firm that can leverage capital to improve the airpark.

Currently, there aren’t restrictions placed on the flight school activity. However, the city has incorporated restrictions on the operations hours, and the number of aircraft in use to reduce the intensity, Gandy said.

“No lease agreement is perfect, we can’t check every box here … we’ve made asks of them [FlyUSA and Paradise Ventures] and they agreed to them, but really they still need to negotiate a lease for the flight school, which generates 40% of our revenue,” Gandy said, stating flight schools are essential to making airparks financially viable.

If approved, a new Community Redevelopment Area could direct millions of dollars to a struggling neighborhood of more than 6,000 residents.

CLEARWATER — City officials took the first step on Thursday toward what they hope will be an economic renaissance in the North Greenwood neighborhood.

The City Council voted unanimously to approve a Community Redevelopment Area plan and its trust fund, which will direct tax revenue to support business, housing, public safety and quality of life initiatives.

The plan will require approval from the Pinellas County Commission and the state. But, if finalized, it’s expected to funnel $28.6 million in property taxes over the next 20 years to a struggling area that once was a vibrant hub of Black entrepreneurship in the city.

Members of the Clearwater Urban Leadership Coalition began to encourage city and county officials in 2019 to create a redevelopment area in North Greenwood.

“We look forward to great things happening,” coalition member Gloria Campbell said after the City Council chambers erupted in applause with the vote.

For community redevelopment areas, a trust fund is created with a base year to set the floor of taxable value. As property values in the area increase every 12 months, the amount above the base year, or the “increment,” is allocated to the trust fund.

This so-called tax increment financing revenue must be spent on projects that reduce blight. The city also allocated $5 million of its COVID-19 relief funds toward the creation of the fund.

The community redevelopment area encompasses 840 acres and is bounded roughly by Sunset Point Road to the north, Kings Highway to the east, Palmetto and Jones streets to the south and North Osceola Avenue to the west.

Those boundaries include small areas just outside the traditional North Greenwood neighborhood but will help generate revenue as redevelopment occurs. The city expects roughly $100 million of investment over the next few years in the Old Bay neighborhood southeast of North Greenwood, which will contribute to the tax increment, according to planning manager Jayme Lopko.

The area is home to 6,619 residents, including about 27% who live in poverty, according to the plan. In some blocks where restaurants and shops thrived in the 1960s, there now are vacant lots and empty buildings.

The plan outlines the increment tax revenue to be spent on initiatives focused on housing, economic development, mobility and poverty reduction. This includes one-time emergency financial assistance for individuals, sidewalk and trail improvements, mentoring and apprenticeship programs, rental assistance, affordable housing development and business programs.

A Citizens Advisory Committee will be established, with three members appointed by the city council and two by the county xommission. The committee will make recommendations to the council members on the annual budget, adoption of programs and new initiatives.

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In a previous interview, Campbell, with the Clearwater Urban Leadership Coalition, said the idea for the community redevelopment area in Clearwater stemmed from a 2013 county study that identified North Greenwood as one of the five most impoverished areas in Pinellas.

Interim City Manager Jennifer Poirrier said she discovered the failure on Friday and services have since restarted.

Clearwater has failed to process any residential recyclable materials since last July, a major lapse that led to the resignation of the city’s solid waste assistant director this week, officials confirmed Thursday.

The breakdown involved thousands of tons of materials left at the curb by city residents, and kept it from getting to Waste Management’s center in Ybor City. Instead, the materials were sent to the Pinellas Waste-to-Energy Plant with the regular garbage, according to interim City Manager Jennifer Poirrier.

Poirrier said she received a tip about the issue from an employee in December and immediately began investigating. She said she questioned solid waste assistant director Bryant Johnson, who assured her recycling was occurring.

She then requested a series of records from Johnson. On Friday, Poirrier said she discovered a letter that Johnson received from Waste Management in November stating it was discontinuing its contract with Clearwater because the city had not delivered recyclables to the Ybor City facility since July.

She said Johnson resigned in lieu of termination on Monday.

“Disappointed. Disgusted,” Poirrier said of the situation.

She said the city initiated an interim arrangement with Waste Management earlier this week, so recycling has already restarted.

Poirrier said she did not have an estimate of how many tons of recycling had been diverted to the waste-to-energy plant in the past six months. But in 2018, the city collected 19.2 million pounds of plastic containers, glass bottles, metal cans, mixed paper and newspaper, according to the city’s website.

Clearwater’s solid waste department has been somewhat in turmoil recently with high turnover and vacant positions. Poirrier said the department currently has no controller or senior accountant.

Longtime director Earl Gloster retired in November.

Poirrier said she believes recycling was not occurring because of problems with equipment and personnel.

“There are just a lot of questions we don’t have the answers to right now,” she said.

The City Council named Poirrier interim city manager on Jan. 5 after voting 3-2 to fire City Manager Jon Jennings, largely due to communication failures.

After the discovery that recycling was not occurring, the city’s innovation director, Micah Maxwell, has been assigned to serve as solid waste director to continue investigating the issue. Finance staff has also been assigned to assist, Poirrier said.

Poirrier said the city was planning to issue a news release to explain the situation. Mayor Frank Hibbard also said he wanted the city to be transparent with residents about the failure and measures taken to correct it.

“I was appalled when I found out about it for a number of reasons,” Hibbard said. “First of all, it was a breach of trust with our residents, and secondly the fact that it wasn’t caught sooner.”

Hibbard said he wants residents to be assured their recyclables are now being picked up and delivered to the Ybor City plant.

“It’s just unacceptable,” he said. “We’ve got to gain everybody’s trust back, but the first way to do that is admit the mistake.”