County planning to purchase building in May 2026
Among the Sarasota County constitutional officers and appointed officials who ended up appearing before the County Commission last week to discuss issues regarding their proposed budgets for the 2026 fiscal year, Dr. Russell Vega, the District 12 medical examiner, made it clear that he was not happy about how high his expenses are expected to be.
And he also made it clear that he has no control over that factor: His landlord at the facility whose construction the County Commission agreed to in early 2021 is requiring him to pay the property taxes that will be owed in 2026 for the building.
Of course, Vega did point out, the property tax revenue will go back to the county.
The building standing at 4480 Fruitville Road in Sarasota formally is owned by 4480 Fruitville LLC. The registered agent of that limited liability company is John LaCivita, executive vice president of Willis A. Smith Construction of Sarasota.
The rent and property taxes add up to $1,928,504 for the 2026 fiscal year, which will begin on Oct. 1, Vega told the County Commission. The property tax payment will be $296,401, Vega added.
In comparison, his budgeted expenses for professional medical services is $3,995,386. That line item covers all of his investigative staff — the medical personnel — and most of his services, he said. The uptick for that line item in the next fiscal year is 4.5%, according to the slide he showed the commissioners.
In December 2020, as negotiations over the new Medical Examiner’s Office building were underway, Carolyn Eastwood, director of the county’s Capital Projects Department, told the commissioners that the proposal called for the county to pay $34.75 per square foot for the first year that Vega and his staff occupied the structure. The building was expected to encompass about 39,488 square feet.
Then, she noted, the lease payment for each subsequent year would rise by 3% or the amount of the Consumer Price Index (CPI), whichever proved to be greater.
Eastwood projected that the annual lease payments would add up to between $4.4 million and $4.9 million over three years, at which time the county would be able to purchase the property.
The county also would be responsible for property taxes during the lease term, Eastwood said at that time. That total for three years was anticipated to run from $644,000 to $712,000, she added. However, a portion of those funds automatically would go back into the county’s General Fund, which is the repository for property tax revenue, Eastwood noted.
On Jan. 26, 2021, the commissioners adopted a resolution that agreed to a 30-year lease of the facility, with the option to purchase it after three years. Before the vote, Eastwood provided an updated, approximate total for the lease expense over three years: $5 million to $5.6 million. The lease did end up including the annual rent escalator of 3%, or the CPI, whichever was higher.
Further, Eastwood told the commissioners, while the county would be responsible for paying the property taxes, Vega expected to save $270,000 a year in operating expenses by having his own facility instead of having to rent space in other locations.
During his Aug. 19 presentation to the commissioners, Vega did note the county’s plans to purchase the building in May 2026, “which would eliminate that whole lease element for the budget anyway [in the future].” Thus, he emphasized, “We’ll actually have a very large decrease [in the proposed budget for the 2027 fiscal year].”
Vega noted that the total expenditures for his FY 2026 budget are $6,775,503, which is up 8.7%, compared to his current budget of $6,234,756.
The lowest amount for any line item in his budget, he said, is the $1,000 that represents what he called the remnant of the old contract he had had with Sarasota Memorial Hospital, whose facilities he used for autopsies prior to the construction of his new building on Fruitville Road.
“It was decided,” he explained, “that the contract should remain open, should there ever be a need for those services to be transferred to the hospital in the future. God willing,” he added, “that will never happen.”
The morgue services line item in his budget, Vega noted, is expected to increase by 4% for FY 2026, for a total of $671,580.
That portion of the budget, he said, involves maintenance and operations of the autopsy facility in the Fruitville Road building that he and his staff moved into about two years ago.
He told the commissioners that he would like to keep the salary increases that he had built into the budget, resulting in the 4% and 4.5% upticks for the professional medical services and morgue services line items.
“The needs of the office haven’t really changed much in the last year,” Vega said. “We’ve actually seen a decrease in our case load and workload because the number of fentanyl deaths has decreased, which is a good thing.”
Contributions continue from Manatee and DeSoto counties
Following Vega’s remarks, Commissioner Mark Smith asked, “Manatee [County] does contribute to your budget?”
“Absolutely,” Vega responded. Sarasota County, he added, provides most of the funding for the morgue services. However, he continued, the funding for the professional medical services portion of his budget is laid out in an interlocal agreement with Manatee and DeSoto counties, which are included in his District 12 territory. Sarasota County covers 46% to 47% of those, Vega noted.
Manatee and DeSoto counties reimburse Sarasota County “roughly $2 million,” he added.
“That softens the blow,” Smith told Vega.
Commissioner Ron Cutsinger asked county administrative staff for confirmation that he was correct in recalling that funds had been set aside out of the county’s proceeds of the extra penny of sales tax revenue to cover the county’s purchase of the Fruitville Road structure next year.
“That’s correct,” Steve Botelho, who is the deputy county administrator and the chief financial management officer for the county.
Staff already is working on the details of that purchase, for final County Commission approval, Botelho added.
Cutsinger thanked Vega for appearing before the commission that day to explain the situation with the property taxes. “I look forward to May when we buy that building and do away with those lease payments,” Cutsinger said.
“Me, too,” Vega responded.