BAY COUNTY -- Voters, who turned down a proposed half-cent sales tax by a nearly 2-to-1 margin, now face some budget-balancing options, among them hikes in tipping fees or property taxes or cuts in county services, a city commissioner warns. Part of the tax would have been used to pay $41.5 million still owed on a garbage-burning incinerator.

GULF COUNTY -- Commissioners stopped the clock on a proposed vote this month on a single time zone for the county, the only one in Florida split between Central Time and Eastern Time. Commissioners initially wanted to poll voters on choosing Central Time, then added a choice of Eastern Time, but recently, detecting no surge of voter enthusiasm, deleted the question altogether -- for now.

PANAMA CITY-- Construction has started on a one-of-a-kind Littoral Warfare Research Facility, a three-story, $10-million research center to house offices for 49 scientists and engineers when completed in 2006. The facility is part of the Naval Surface Warfare Center. Research will include development of control capability for unmanned systems in coastal combat.

PANAMA CITY BEACH -- Bay Medical Center will start construction of a $9.5-million complex, Bay Medical at the Beach, this month, for completion in early 2006. The new complex will bring specialized medical services such as CT scans, magnetic resonance imaging and ultrasound, procedures not currently available there.

TALLAHASSEE -- Florida State University set a record for contract research in the 2004 fiscal year at $182.7 million, up 13%. Nearly 80% of the funding came from the federal government. Also boosting FSU's research standing is the addition of British scientist Sir Harold Kroto, a 1996 Nobel Prize winner, in the department of chemistry and biochemistry.