The Polk County Sheriff’s Office has served an arrest warrant for Gavin Chase Potwin and charged him with Attempted First Degree Murder . This all stemmed from an incident over a week ago near Rancho Bonito Park in Lakeland. According to reports Potwin shot into a vehicle occupied with multiple…
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The ACPC runs ongoing programs that address local issues, including a chapter of Street Warriors that provides hot meals to people experiencing homelessness, the group said in a news release. ACPC also supplies packs of weekend groceries for elementary school students and their families and is a partner in It Takes a Village, a food pantry coalition with the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Lakeland, Red Tent Initiative and Rose Dynasty Foundation.
ACPC volunteers will also donate their time to clean adopted roadways during Secular Week of Action, the release said.
Ray gave the invocation at a County Commission meeting last year, and Joseph Richardson of the Central Florida Freethought Community has also given invocations.
Polk County seeks help from Legislature in curbing Rancho Bonito
A decade ago, Polk County commissioners frustrated over their inability to curb an unpermitted off-road vehicle park wondered whether the Florida Legislature could help.
Commissioners raised the idea of expanding state statutes and giving local governments the right to seize properties deemed to be public nuisances. That might be the only option for controlling Rancho Bonito, commissioners said at the time.
One of those commissioners, Rep. Melony Bell, R-Fort Meade, is now a second-term state legislator. And the idea seems no closer to reality 10 years later.
Former County Commissioner John Hall revised the notion last year before losing a re-election bid. Hall conferred with County Attorney Michael Craig, who produced a draft for potential legislation that would amend state law covering abatement of nuisances.
As owners failed to pay taxes, lots became available for purchase through tax deeds. County records show that the original buyers typically paid about $5,500 in the 1980s. A random check of deeds found many tracts owned by residents of Puerto Rico and at least one by someone in China.
Residents of New York, Ohio and other states own plenty of lots, while many deeds list owners living throughout Florida, include some from Polk County.
As Rancho Bonito became an unofficial recreation park, owners began selling partial shares of deeds to allow access. Some deeds recorded with the county have hundreds of partial owners, some with stakes as small as 0.01%.