Stormwater Director Quartermaine discusses variety of initiatives since his hiring in 2025
Since 2007, Sarasota County has held the Class 5 rating in what is called the Community Rating System (CRS), which enables county residents to get a 25% discount on flood insurance purchased through the National Flood Insurance Program.
However, Stormwater Department Director Ben Quartermaine has told the County Commission, “We’re very close to increasing [that].”
As FloodMapp.com explains, “CRS is a voluntary program under the National Flood Insurance Program that recognizes and incentivizes communities [that] reduce their flood risk” through active measures such as improved floodplain management, early warning systems and public awareness initiative.
During his June 17 presentation of his proposed department budget for the 2027 fiscal year, Quartermaine pointed out of the CRS, “My goal is [Class] 3,” though, “initially, it may be a Class 4. … It’s just a matter of negotiations with FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency].”
A Class 4 rating would result in a 30% reduction in flood insurance premiums, as shown in a FEMA chart that The Sarasota News Leader reviewed online; for Class 3, the figure would be 35%.
“It’s a big number,” County Administrator Jonathan Lewis said of the Class 3 savings for county residents, as Quartermaine discussed the process last week.
The 2024 CRS annual report for the county said, “[M]ore than 1,500 communities participate in the CRS program nationwide,” and few of them have a class designation higher than Sarasota County’s. “Twenty-seven communities are Class 4 or better, 23 are Class 3 or better, 11 are Class 2 or better, and only two are Class 1,” the report pointed out.
Before FEMA awards Sarasota County a higher class, Quartermaine explained on June 17, the agency will have to approve the county’s new waterway maintenance plan.
Along with his CRS program update, Quartermaine discussed other initiatives with which he has been engaged since he began work as the Stormwater Department director in August 2025.
Altogether, Quartermaine said, about 2,220 tons of sediment — characterized as “non-vegetative debris” in a slide he showed the board members — was removed from the county stormwater system’s ditches, roads and pipes between Oct. 1, 2024 and April 30, 2025. For the same period of this fiscal year, the figure was 4,918, the slide noted. The latter number, he explained, was the result of the work of in-house personnel, not contracted workers, “within the smaller [waterway] branches,” which has “an even bigger impact on neighborhood streets.”
Quartermaine reminded the commissioners that the contractor who had undertaken the Phase 1 dredging of Phillippi Creek — from approximately U.S. 41 north to South Beneva Road — had removed 60,000 cubic yards of material. That phase saw the waterway dredged to a width of 50 feet and a depth of 4 feet. That initiative was dubbed the “High-Spot Dredging.”
When Commissioner Joe Neunder sought assurance that the Phase 2 project for Phillippi Creek would remove even more sediment, Quartermaine replied, “Oh, absolutely.”
Phase 2 will entail what Quartermaine has called “the maximum allowable dredge” of the waterway between U.S. 41 and Beneva Road, with adequate clearance from docks and piers to ensure that no private structures are damaged.
Commissioner Mark Smith alluded to the persistent anxiety of homeowners on Phillippi Creek, who had hoped that Phase 2 could be completed before the June 1 start of the 2026 hurricane season. When Smith asked whether Quartermaine believes that staff remains on track to submit the Phase 2 dredging permit applications to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) by the end of this month, Quartermaine assured him that that remains the plan.
In fact, he told Smith, “It will be done by the end of this week.”
“Super,” Smith responded.
Earlier during his June 17 presentation, Quartermaine reported that his goal is to have a contractor on board for Phase 2 by the end of this year, with the maximum allowable dredge to begin by early 2027. (See the related article in this issue.)
Altogether, he indicated on June 17, the material slated to be removed during that endeavor is expected to total about 80,000 cubic yards.
Further, he noted his staff is working on its maintenance plan for creeks and canals, which is due by the end of the year. “A big part of that,” he added, “is the Sediment Management and Abatement Program.”
Moreover, Quartermaine pointed out, for the first six months of the 2025 fiscal year, 61,778 pounds of nitrogen was removed from the stormwater system. From Oct. 1, 2025 through April 30 of this year, the figure was 27,681.
For phosphorous, the number of pounds removed for the first six months of FY 2025 was 4,549; for the first six months of this fiscal year, it was 7,980.
Scientists have identified nitrogen as the primary food for the red tide algae, Karenia brevis, but phosphorous also has been shown to spur the spread of the organism.
Referencing the nitrogen figure, Commissioner Neunder characterized it as “massive amounts.” That could not be emphasized sufficiently, he added.
“So kudos to you,” Neunder told Quartermaine. “That’s a big number in my book.”
Forging ahead with other goals for this fiscal year
In regard to yet another initiative, Quartermaine reported that staff has scheduled a meeting with the City of Sarasota’s new manager, Karie Friling, who began work in late May, and the city engineer, Sage Kamiya, regarding the interlocal agreement between the city and county that calls for the county to handle all of the city’s stormwater work.
“Most likely,” he said, he would be able to provide information to the commissioners about those talks by the middle of the summer.
In March 2025, Spencer Anderson, then the director of the county’s Public Works Department — which dealt with both transportation and stormwater issues — surprised Sarasota city commissioners with news that county leaders wanted to turn over the city’s stormwater work to the city. City Commissioner Jen Ahearn-Koch, especially, has talked about the effects of hearing that news as the two boards held a joint session on a variety of topics.
Referring yet another performance goal for the current fiscal year, Quartermaine noted that his staff had assessed about 75 miles of pipelines through the end of April; the target was 48 miles.
Trucks with video equipment are used, he explained, to determine whether any of the pipes need replacing or new linings.
More staff and the Resilient SRQ money
In concert with the commission’s approval last fall of a higher level of service from the department, Quartermaine also reported on June 17 that 13 new employees were added to the Stormwater Department during the prior fiscal year. They were assigned to field crews that work on roadway ditch operations, ditch and canal inspections, and maintenance, he continued.
Additionally, the department’s senior manager joined the staff this week. “She’s getting up to speed,” Quartermaine noted. “We’re really happy to have her.
County Administrator Lewis asked the woman, Kari Holmes, to stand, so the commissioners could see her, though he acknowledged laughingly that he was embarrassing her in the process.
In response to a News Leader inquiry, county staff reported that Holmes’ full title is stormwater and business operations senior manager.
Quartermaine was requesting nine extra employees for the 2027 fiscal year, he said. (No member of the board objected to that facet of the proposed budget.)
Two of those will be what he called “skilled trades workers,” who will support the department’s Aquatics Team; it deploys pesticide and herbicide treatments in canals and other waterways. “We’re beefing up that crew,” as Quartermaine put it.
Another of those nine new staff members will be a professional engineer “to support our operations group,” and to work on certifying all county facilities — including parks and Public Utilities structures, he continued. All county buildings have stormwater permits that have to be managed effectively, Quartermaine noted.
Altogether, as shown in a slide that Quartermaine presented to the board, the portion of the department budget allocated to personnel will rise from the adopted amount of $10,672,424 this fiscal year to $13,489,036 for the 2027 fiscal year.
He did point out that, although the same slide showed his 2027 budget to be up 73%, compared to the 2026 fiscal year budget, the 2027 budget includes the $45 million that the commissioners allocated to the Stormwater Department for the Phillippi Creek dredging. The money is from what staff has designated the Resilient SRQ Program; it is funded by a nearly $210.1-million grant that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) awarded the county in January 2025 to deal with unmet needs in the aftermath of the 2024 hurricane system.
“We’re very happy to have [that $45 million],” Quartermaine told the commissioners, “and we’re putting it to good use,” even though it “kind of skews our numbers a bit here.”