Schoettle-Gumm provides report on 2024 activities of committee as its new chair
The chair of the Sarasota County Stormwater Environmental Utility Advisory Committee (SEUAC) has explained to the County Commission that a 2001 ordinance that established a program through which residents on waterways could be assessed for the cleaning out of creeks and channels as a navigational measure, not one for stormwater maintenance.
Susan Schoettle-Gumm of Sarasota, who was working on county stormwater legal issues at that time, as a member of the Office of the County Attorney, said that when what is called the Municipal Service Taxing Unit (MSTU) was created, “hundreds and hundreds of pages” included with the ordinance delineated the boundary of the MSTU.
“Generically,” Schoettle-Gumm continued, “it included one lot on either side of every waterway with a connection to the Intracoastal Waterway …”
“I don’t recall any thought at the time that [the program] was going to be used for stormwater volume and drainage,” she told the commissioners during their regular meeting on July 9. Nonetheless, she noted, “There’s going to be an overlap,” with navigational dredging also having the benefit of improving stormwater conveyance.
During the commission’s May 21 stormwater workshop, Spencer Anderson, director of the county’s Public Works Department — which included the Stormwater Division until the commissioners last month called for a separate Stormwater Department — addressed the MSTU program, as well as a subsequent, related petition program for keeping navigational channels open. He blamed the lack of residents’ participation in the latter as one reason that waterways such as Phillippi Creek had gone decades without any dredging.
Since early January, residents who live on Phillippi Creek, especially, have appeared at County Commission meetings, providing photos and relating their experiences in the 2024 storm season to illustrate the problems emanating from the buildup of sediment in that waterway. Many of them have talked of the repetitive flooding of their homes as storm surge rose to even higher levels because of the sediment clogging the creek.
During her July 9 remarks, Schoettle-Gumm noted that the MSTU program was set us as “a way to address people coming in and asking for [navigational] dredging because they saw Stormwater [crews] out dredging.”
She worked on two amendments to the 2001 ordinance — in 2002 and 2003 — she pointed out. Another amendment was approved in 2008, she said, after she left county employment.
Before she went into private practice, Schoettle-Gumm said, the petition program that Anderson of Public Works also had discussed on May 21 was created, to make residents pay for county staff’s navigational dredging in their neighborhoods.
“Most of the [2001] ordinance repeatedly talks about navigation,” she noted.
Commissioner Mark Smith, who had asked her about the ordinance, expressed his appreciation for her remarks.
Schoettle-Gumm formally was appearing before the board on July 9 to deliver the SEUAC’s report on its activities in 2024. Although the report was listed on the commission’s June 3 Consent Agenda of routine business matters, for adoption by the board members, Smith asked that it be presented in person. None of the committee members was present to discuss it on June 3; County Administrator Jonathan Lewis indicated to the commissioners that staff had not planned on having a member of the committee provide a verbal report to them.
‘A conduit for numerous residential property owners’
In discussing the work of the SEUAC over the past year, Schoettle-Gumm told the commissioners, “Recently, we have been a conduit for numerous residential property owners,” who suffered damage during the 2024 storm season. During one session, she added, “Over an hour of our time was [spent] receiving public input from the residents. But we felt it was really important to listen to them and help provide a conduit of additional information.”
Prior to last year, Schoettle-Gumm indicated, the committee members saw very few members of the public showing up at their meetings.
She also reported, “Most of the information we have been requesting from staff they have promptly produced to us. They’ve been excellent to work with. We’ve been strongly supported by staff and by the Stormwater [Division] personnel.”
“I know that there’s a lot of turmoil and disappointment [from] the public,” Schoettle-Gumm acknowledged. “There may be a loss of trust with the Stormwater Utility, but I’m here to tell you” that her interactions with the county’s Stormwater personnel — going back to her time in the Office of the County Attorney — has demonstrated “They care; they work hard; and they are really, really on the side of making things better for the public to the best of their ability, [though] I think they are hamstrung in a few instances.”
One of the latter examples, she pointed out, has been the inability of the Stormwater program “to hire and retain qualified personnel, both at the professional level and the Field Operations level.”
The committee members, she added, have been concerned about the program’s turnover for years. They do not believe that staff can improve that situation on their own, Schoettle-Gumm told the commissioners.
The written report for 2024 that was provided to the commissioners said that the Stormwater Division was operating with 80% of the staff it needs; for the Field Services section, the level was 89%.
A June 27 article by reporters with the Florida Trident discussed the turnover in the program, referencing emails that Anderson, director of Public Works, had sent to the director of the county’s Human Resources Department, discussing the need for higher pay to entice employees to stay with the county.
The SEUAC members voted to recommend that that situation be addressed, Schoettle-Gumm told the commissioners.
Yet another SEUAC recommendation, she noted, is for the use of outside consulting firms to fill the gaps when the county “does not have adequate staff to address the issues.”
‘Diverse representation’
Earlier on July 9, the commissioners had voted to reappoint Schoettle-Gumm to the SEUAC; her term had expired, but she had applied to continue serving on the committee. (See the related article in this issue.)
Before she began discussing the 2024 report, Schoettle-Gumm thanked the board members for their action, noting that her SEUAC colleagues had named her chair before her previous term ended, with hope that she would be reappointed.
During the board’s July 9 discussion about the SEUAC applications, however, Commissioner Teresa Mast initially called for staff to readvertise all three open seats on the committee, in an effort to entice stormwater engineers and hydrologists to apply for them.
Ultimately, the commissioners agreed on two appointments and readvertisement of the third seat, with the focus on the specific expertise that Mast had proposed.
Yet, Schoettle-Gumm told the commissioners, “We do have quite a bit of diverse representation on the SEUAC right now.”
She proceeded to discuss the other members of the committee.
John Ryan, she said, used to be a county water quality manager.
Robert Wright, she continued, also worked in the county’s stormwater program for many years.
Marian Pomeroy, Schoettle-Gumm added, worked on the area’s estuaries program for many years.
Arthur Lindemanis, a Sarasota City Commission appointee, has a background as a CEO, she continued. He always has “really good questions” related to budgets and reserves, she added.
The prior committee chair, Miguel Rivera, is an aeronautical engineer, she noted. He used to work on Defense Department contracts, Schoettle-Gumm said, so he had expertise with large projects.
Another former member, Clay Tappan, is a local stormwater engineer “who had a lot of really good input,” she pointed out.
Yet another former SEUAC member, David Shafer, is an ecologist.
“I think it’s entirely appropriate,” she told the commissioners, to add someone to the committee with engineering expertise.
As for her background, Schoettle-Gumm explained that she served in the Office of the County Attorney for 10 years, starting in 1993. Her first assignment, she noted, was to work on the stormwater program and the assessments for it. The county had lost litigation over its efforts to implement the assessments, she continued, so her task was to ensure that the assessments could be found to be legally valid.
“There is language in that [assessments] ordinance that isn’t necessarily appropriate anymore,” Schoettle-Gumm pointed out, as it is more than 20 years old.
Since she has been on the SEUAC, Schoettle-Gumm said, the county had received a $14.5-million grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to address problems in Alligator Creek. “It’s the largest grant ever awarded to the Stormwater Utility,” she pointed out.
(A July document produced by the county’s Capital Projects Department explains that the goals of the Alligator Creek project are to restore the creek’s canal, so it once again has more natural hydrology, and to reduce the amount of nutrients and sediment pollution that flow from the creek to Lemon Bay. The NOAA grant is being used for the construction phase of the undertaking, the document says.)
Among work of the committee, Schoettle-Gumm continued, was assisting county staff with improving responses to customer comments and complaints, especially from City of Sarasota residents. Lindemanis, the City of Sarasota committee appointee, she said, was the person who raised that issue.
Since then, she added, staff’s efforts in responding to customers seem “to have been working much better.”