Northport proclaims February CTE Month; Suncoast Technical College announces $7.5M county grant and $707,000 state HVAC award

The City Commission of the City of Northport on Tuesday proclaimed February 2025 as Career and Technical Education Month and heard announcements from Suncoast Technical College’s Northport campus about two funding awards intended to expand local workforce training.

The proclamation recognized career and technical education (CTE) programs in Northport and across Florida for preparing students for jobs in “health care, information technology, advanced manufacturing, construction and more,” and formally designated February 2025 as CTE Month for the city.

Suncoast Technical College Northport campus assistant director Michael Endy told the commission the campus had secured a $7.5 million award from the county commission through the SRQ resiliency grant program to fund the next phase of the Northport campus expansion. Endy said the project “will be going before our school board hopefully this month on the eighteenth” and that the expansion would add new trades training and more capacity for health-care–related programs. Endy also announced a separate $707,000 state grant to establish a new HVAC program.

Why it matters: City and college officials said the expansion aims to supply local employers with trained workers for in-demand fields, and leaders framed the grants as filling workforce needs for the city’s growing health-care and construction sectors.

Endy said many of the city’s recently hired firefighters and emergency medical technicians attended STC programs. He described the grants as supporting both the college’s expansion and new program starts; the timing of the school-board review and the grants’ terms will determine when construction and new classes begin. The transcript records Endy saying the project’s completion date as “July of 20 seventh,” a phrase that was unclear in the meeting record; the precise completion year was not specified in the transcript.

No formal Commission vote was required to receive the proclamation. At the start of the meeting, the commission approved the meeting agenda by a recorded vote of 5–0; Vice Mayor Emmerich made the motion and Commissioner Langdon seconded it.

The school-board review Endy mentioned is the next procedural step he identified; Endy said local partners, including health-care employers, would be part of the planned expansion and program sequence.

The proclamation text read to the commission highlighted the role of CTE in providing “academic, technical and employability skills” and singled out the Northport campus of Suncoast Technical College for its local workforce role.

Looking ahead: Endy told commissioners the HVAC program would begin after finalizing grant and program details, and that the full expansion timeline depends on school-board and grant approvals.

Votes at a glance

- Approve meeting agenda — Motion by Vice Mayor Emmerich; second by Commissioner Langdon. Outcome: approved 5–0.