(MIAMI, Fla.) In South Florida news today, Fort Lauderdale takes another step towards using Elon Musk's company to bore tunnels beneath the city, President Biden offers federal relief aid for schools, a Miami teen makes homecoming history, and Wynwood is hitting a wall — literally.
The following list contains the area's breaking news for Wednesday, October 5.
Read on today's top stories:
Fort Lauderdale is one step closer to using Elon Musk's company to build tunnels
The city of Fort Lauderdale has taken a big step toward hiring Elon Musk’s “Boring Company” to build tunnels.
Commissioners voted 4-1 Monday night to start negotiations with the Boring Company. A pair of tunnels would go back and forth from downtown and the beach. Teslas would shuttle people. They’d have drivers at first and eventually be fully automated.
Florida teen makes history as school's first trans homecoming queen
Evan Bialosuknia looked every bit the undisputed queen of her high school homecoming.
She’d been nominated to her Orlando school’s homecoming court, with enough votes to get her name on the ballot for homecoming queen. She thought she might have a shot at winning, though she tried to avoid getting her hopes up. Bialosuknia’s peers voted for her to be their homecoming queen, the first transgender student at Olympia High School to wear the crown.
Will Wynwood's rapid growth be its downfall?
Once just an aggregation of unassuming warehouses, Wynwood was intentionally reimagined to form one of the world's grittiest and most beloved art districts. But of the 70 galleries, collections, and museums that were once based here, only 15 remain — long since outnumbered by the bars, clubs, and restaurants. Colorful murals still splay across exterior walls, a popular backdrop for selfies and photos. These days locals and tourists flock to Wynwood to eat, drink, and, more recently, to party. In the wake of COVID-19 lockdowns, the neighborhood has mutated into a flashy nightlife destination. Club owners, though, fear their reign will be short-lived and that they'll suffer a fate like that of the galleries before them: the cranes and towering constriction of more than a dozen condos foreshadowing perhaps the next iteration of Miami's fastest-evolving 'hood: residential.
President Biden to Florida: Do you want school funding?
A top U.S. Department of Education official on Monday pressed Florida to submit a plan that shows how it intends to use roughly $7 billion in federal relief aid for schools.
If it does not, the state could leave $2.3 billion on the table. Florida is the only state in the country not to apply for the third round of funding from $7 billion allocated to help schools under the Biden administration’s American Rescue Plan stimulus legislation, which was signed into law in March. The first two-thirds of that funding was allocated in March, but until the Florida Department of Education submits a plan, the federal government won’t release the third round worth $2.3 billion.
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