In The News

You hear it often from people who want to see Sarasota County and its cities frozen in time, “commissioners need to stop all of this building.” It is a fascinating premise to think a commissioner would have this sort of power, to issue a moratorium on building.
In reality, in Florida, they don’t. In Florida, private property owners have rights that have special protection due to the Bert J. Harris, Jr. Act.

Several prominent local foundations are urging the Sarasota County Commission to revisit more than $1 million in funding cuts to highly ranked programs made in a process they say was plagued by confusion, inconsistency and a lack of transparency.

SARASOTA — Regional foundations are urging Sarasota County commissioners to reconsider recent votes to cut funding. In a letter signed by leaders of four nonprofit foundations, they pinpointed the June 5 vote on county human service funding and suggests a “second look” at funding high-scoring requests to “prevent expensive future crisis care.”

Some heavy decisions have recently been made at many local governments without the open transparency that should be provided to the public. Decisions are being made, and based upon, important documents or considerations without the public getting to see those documents in advance of meetings. This usurps the ability of the public to comment on the information in the documents, or even understand the decision.

On June 4 in Venice, the County Commission will be having a discussion on eliminating the business license tax in Sarasota County. The Argus Foundation supports the continuation of the business license tax for a public-private partnership for economic development.

The Argus Foundation began to sound the affordable and workforce housing alarm eight years ago as our area was emerging from the Great Recession. We have subsequently written dozens of columns on the topic over the years as the City of Sarasota, in particular, pretended that there was no workforce housing problem.