Funding details to be worked out, with commission majority agreeing residents should not have to pay special tax to help cover cost
At the end of their nearly four-and-a-half-hour-long stormwater workshop on May 21, the Sarasota County commissioners voted unanimously to approve a higher level of annual service for the county’s waterways, including Phillippi Creek.
County Public Works Director Spencer Anderson estimated that the expense for a revised program of work would cost an extra $10 million a year, for a total potential budget of $24,255,648, including contracted services and new equipment. That compares to the current annual cost of $11,346,359, a slide showed.
Anderson included in his chart a one-time expense for more equipment, which he put at $3,009,000.
With commissioners confessing fatigue as the discussion went on after 5 p.m. — following a three-hour budget workshop they conducted that morning — they also agreed to delve later into options for covering the extra expense.
Moreover, after reading through a July 13, 2022 stormwater ordinance that was approved by the board members seated at that time, Commissioner Mark Smith told Anderson that it was his understanding that the county should pay for the maintenance of Phillippi Creek and all the other “natural surface waterways,” as he quoted from the ordinance. They drain from the eastern part of the county to Sarasota Bay and have done so since the 1920s, Smith stressed.
“I have a real problem” with asking residents to pay an extra property tax assessment for the routine cleaning of the waterways, Smith said. “This seems clear that it’s the county’s responsibility.”
“You beat me to it,” Commissioner Tom Knight responded to Smith’s remarks.
One of Anderson’s funding scenarios proposed that the owners of the 197,309 parcels on waterways in both the city of Sarasota and the county pay an additional 0.1312 mills each year. If a new tax were applied just to the county’s affected 169,129 parcels, the slide showed, the proposed millage would be 0.1701.
Chair Joe Neunder said he agreed with Smith, as well, after looking at the sections of the ordinance that Smith had referenced.
Referring to Anderson’s estimated additional, annual expense for the county, Neunder asked, “That’s $100 million over 10 years, right?”
“It’s just a planning level estimate,” Anderson replied.
Commissioner Teresa Mast pointed out, “Ten million is huge.”
When Neunder asked how Anderson came up with that figure, Anderson told him that it was “kind of a ‘guesstimate,’ ” based on the lengths of the canals and creeks. “There’s a lot of unknowns in doing this,” Anderson added.
Noting another comment that Smith had made, Anderson continued, “Leveraging that HUD money to do the initial projects as much as we can [means] we’re set up for success in the future, where we minimize costs” for the 10-year cycles.
Anderson was referring to the $210.1-million grant the county received this year to respond to unmet needs following the 2024 hurricane season. On April 22, the board members approved a final set of allocations for the money, which is an award through the Community Development Block Grant program of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Out of the total, the commissioners proposed spending $75 million on the dredging of waterways, including a portion of Phillippi Creek.
When Commissioner Mast asked Anderson to “define waterways,” in regard to his proposal, he cited Phillippi Creek south of Beneva Road as an example, plus North Creek, South Creek and Curry Creek.
“The intent,” he pointed out, “is that all of these coastal streams and creeks” that do not undergo routine maintenance would be included.
Moreover, Anderson’s presentation pointed to the fact that a countywide program implemented in 2001 led to a lack of maintenance of Phillippi Creek. The creek has not been dredged since 2000, he said.
Requirement for resident participation
In 2001, Anderson explained, the County Commission at that time established what was called the Navigable Waterways Maintenance Management Program. The focus, he noted, was on creeks and streams.
“There were a lot of concerns about … sedimentation from the stormwater system and … there wasn’t the will to put that on the back of the [Stormwater Environmental] Utility at the time.”
The program established a Municipal Services Taxing Unit (MSTU) for waterfront properties in the county, he continued, which “provided administrative funding for getting the program going.”
Then Municipal Services Benefit Units (MSBUs) were set up for specific project areas, Anderson said. Property owners were assessed for the dredging of the waterways on which they lived, he added.
“There was a lot of work initially,” he continued. “It kind of died down …”
In 2009, Anderson said, the County Commission increased the threshold for the number of affected homeowners’ petitions to make projects possible. It rose from the 67% mark to 80%, Anderson explained, because numerous residents had objected to paying the assessments, especially in situations in which smaller percentages of the affected residents had agreed to the initiatives.
“That made pretty much every project not doable,” Anderson pointed out.
Because so few initiatives were taking place as a result of the 2009 change, he continued, the County Commission agreed to reinstate the 67% petition, “to try to get some new projects going. There are a few projects in the feasibility stage at this time.”
Chair Neunder told Anderson, “I was rather shocked at the price” for the necessary consulting work for those initiatives, relative to the total project cost. “Is that industry standard?”
Anderson explained that the smaller the project, typically, the higher the percentage of consulting fee. The larger the overall expense, he noted, the lower the percentage of consulting fee works out to be.
Then Anderson showed the commissioners a slide listing 20 projects that never made it past the feasibility study phase. “There wasn’t a tolerance for these funding districts to pay … the proposed assessment for these projects.”
He also showed the commissioners two maps — one for North County, one for South County — with all the MSTU waterfront properties in the county. The owners pay “a very small assessment on their [annual] tax bill,” he said. The total the county receives, he added, is less than $200,000 per year.
“This funds some of the feasibility studies [for waterway maintenance],” Anderson noted. A “few million dollars” has been collected, “which we’re potentially able to use for some of the dredging work we’re talking about.”
As of this point in 2025, Anderson pointed out, seven projects have been completed, as shown in another slide.
‘Roughly a six-month backlog’
Yet another focus of the May 21 discussion was how far behind the Public Works/Stormwater staff is in carrying out routine maintenance.
In response to question from Neunder, Anderson said that since Hurricane Ian “came through” in September 2022, the Public Works staff has had “roughly about a six-month backlog of work.” That was exacerbated by the activities related directly to the 2024 storm season, Anderson added.
“From June [2024] to the end of October,” he said, staff handled “nothing but hurricane recovery and response. … That … certainly shot a hole in programmatic maintenance.”
Anderson further explained that the maintenance schedule runs year-long. If staff could reduce that to nine months, he pointed out, in years with recurring storms, like 2024, “We might be able to catch up on that backlog, or not have so much backlog.”
Commissioner Ron Cutsinger asked Anderson, “Have we contracted additional maintenance services at this point … to catch up, so we’re really prepared for storm season?”
“To a certain extent we are,” Anderson replied, noting that additional work had been allocated to some of the companies, mostly for what he refers to as “hand clearing” of county assets in locations where equipment cannot be used.
Nonetheless, Anderson continued, the department does not have enough assistance through those contracts to catch up with the backlog.
“What do you need from this commission?” Cutsinger asked. “Can we authorize some additional dollars for additional contracted maintenance services?”
Cutsinger then referenced public testimony that afternoon about some areas where residents have “high degrees of concern” because of the lack of maintenance.
“Those are things we’re working on,” Anderson responded. “I have to coordinate more closely with my Field Services team to get a better plan for what the gap is between what we’re planning to have done on schedule and what we might need some resources for.”
“And you’re going to keep us well-informed about that?” Cutsinger asked.
“Absolutely,” Anderson said.
Commissioner Knight suggested that it would be preferable to have “the resources in your back pocket while the plan’s coming together … before somebody else snags [the contractors].”
Then Knight told Anderson, “That’s a little disturbing to me, that the plan’s not prepared.”
“That’s what we’re here today to talk about, too,” Anderson replied.
Neunder also asked Anderson whether staff has a system for tracking the work of the contractors, to ensure that they are doing what they are supposed to be doing. “Is there accountability, basically?” Neunder asked.
The department does have a team of inspectors, Anderson replied, to validate that the work has been completed.
Moreover, Anderson explained, the inspections “ramp up during the time of storms.”
He also noted, “We go out at least before and after [a] storm to make sure that [“hot spots’] are clear.” The county has more than 200 of those critical areas, he added.