Protect Siesta Key continues to protest county’s plan to give Holderness 162 Beach Road parcel
Once more, Sarasota County staff has placed on a County Commission agenda the proposed, formal settlement of a lawsuit that Siesta Key property owner and manager Michael Holderness filed against the county in 2024.
Formally, the complaint was filed by Siesta Beach Lots LLC, of which Holderness is the principal.
And, once again, the leader of a Siesta Key organization is encouraging the members of that nonprofit to protest the proposed exchange of property that is the focus of the settlement.
On Sept. 22, the commissioners will conduct a public hearing after which they will be expected to vote on turning over to Holderness the county property located at 162 Beach Road. In turn, the county is to accept three other beach parcels from Holderness.
The proposal also calls for the county to pay Holderness $400,000.
In early July, the commissioners voted 4-1 to accept the terms of the revised settlement. Commissioner Mark Smith, a long-time Siesta resident, cast the “No” vote.
The original terms were amended after the Office of the County Attorney learned of a problem with the deed to one of the four parcels that Holderness initially had offered to give the county in exchange for the 162 Beach Road property. That fourth parcel was eliminated from the settlement.
Further, in response to a request from Commissioner Teresa Mast, Holderness agreed to reduce the amount the county is to pay him; it was $500,000, when the four parcels were included. It had dropped to $425,000 in the revised settlement, before Mast asked him in July whether he would be amenable to accepting a flat $400,000.
The Sept. 22 meeting will take place at the new County Administration Center standing at 1 Apex Road, next to the Celery Fields, in Sarasota.
The item is No. 21 on the agenda, following the Open to the Public comment period and three discussion items.
Further, the item is listed as a Presentation Upon Request, meaning no formal staff remarks will be provided unless a member of the board asks for them. Nonetheless, public comments will be accepted.
Reiterating objections
The commissioners were to have addressed the settlement during their regular meeting on Aug. 25. However, as The Sarasota News Leader reported, problems with the public advertisement of the agenda item — as noted in an email written by Shawn Yeager, director of the county’s Parks, Recreation and Natural Resources Department (PRNR) — resulted in a delay of the public hearing until Sept. 22.
An attorney representing the nonprofit Protect Siesta Key (PSK) had sent a letter to the commissioners, with details about the advertisement’s errors.
For more than a year, the commissioners have contended with aspects of the settlement of Holderness’ federal lawsuit, in which he alleged a “taking” of property he owns on Siesta Beach because county staff had signage indicating that area was open to the public.
Moreover, as Holderness and his attorney, former Florida Sen. President Bill Galvano, have pointed out, county staff pursued Code Enforcement action — including the imposition of fines — after Holderness took steps to try to prevent people from using his private property.
One key element of the settlement is the transfer to Holderness of the parcel standing at 162 Beach Road, which the county purchased in 2017 with Neighborhood Parkland Program funding. That money came out of revenue resulting from the annual 0.25 tax paid by owners of property countywide. The funds are to be used for the purchase of both environmentally sensitive lands, to protect them from development, and parcels considered to be good locations for community parks.
Lourdes Ramirez, the Siesta resident who serves as president of Protect Siesta Key, has protested the proposed transfer of the 162 Beach Road property both in person at commission meetings and in newsletters to Protect Siesta Key members. She contends that the action would be illegal, because of the county’s use of the tax revenue to buy the land.
In Protect Siesta Key’s September newsletter, Ramirez included a link to the letter that the organization’s attorneys sent the commissioners in regard to the planned land deal.
Among the points that attorney Robert Hartsell, of the Pompano Beach firm Hartsell Ozery, makes in the letter is that Florida Statute 125.37 “authorizes an exchange only of county property ‘not needed for county purposes,’ and only for property the County ‘may desire to acquire for county purposes.’ Neither predicate exists here, and the record before the Board, much of it created by the County itself, forecloses both findings.”
Hartsell continued, “The County Parcel is needed for county purposes. It is one hundred percent seaward of the Gulf Beach Setback Line, consists entirely of a protected dune system on a state-designated critically eroded beach, lies within a FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency] velocity zone, and buffers the upland residences behind it, residences that flooded during Hurricanes Helene and Milton.
(The Gulf Beach Setback Line was established in 1979 to protect dunes and other beach habitat. If anyone wishes to construct a home seaward of that line, the applicant first has to win a variance from the County Commission.)
Hartsell also pointed out in his letter, “This Board’s predecessors denied four separate coastal setback variances for [the 162 Beach Road] parcel (1992, 2013, 2014, and 2015) before the County purchased it in 2017 for $1,400,000 through the Neighborhood Parkland Acquisition Program precisely so that it would remain protected.”
He added, “County staff advised in this record that the development the exchange is designed to enable ‘would result in direct impacts to nearly all of the existing shoreline stability dune habitat and dune vegetation.’ ”
In early November 2025, the County Commission voted 4-1 to approve a Coastal Setback Variance that Holderness needed to construct a two-story-over-parking, single-family home with 4,190 square feet of living area on the 162 Beach Road land. The public hearing on the variance petition was a facet of the initial, proposed settlement.
Again, Commissioner Smith cast the “No” vote.
Moreover, Hartsell noted in his Aug. 20 letter, the County Commission has approved a referendum that will be on the Nov. 3 General Election ballot, calling for an extension of the Environmentally Sensitive Lands Protection Program through 2049. “A parcel the County bought with dedicated voter-approved funds to protect, that presently performs flood-protection and open-space functions, and whose program the County is presently asking voters to renew, cannot honestly be found ‘not needed for county purposes,’ ” he pointed out.
Moreover, Hartsell wrote, “The lots to be received are not property the County ‘may desire for county purposes.’ The Board need not take our word for it; it may take the County’s. In the federal litigation this settlement resolves,” Hartsell continued, “the County represented under its own signature that Siesta Beach Lots, LLC likely does not own [the three lots] because they were submerged for longer than a tidal epoch, and that a third party may own part of the accreted land; that the lots are subject to the public trust doctrine, such that the public already enjoys the use the settlement purports to purchase; that the lots ‘are not realistically ones which could be developed’; and that the County’s own appraisals valued them at approximately $30,000 apiece, appraisals the County has since described as stale, without obtaining the current valid appraisal [that state law] requires as a predicate to acquisition.”
In the Protect Siesta Key September newsletter, President Ramirez also wrote, “For PSK, the larger issue goes beyond this one property: If land purchased with voter-approved Neighborhood Parkland funds can later be transferred to private ownership, what protection do taxpayers have for other properties purchased under the same program?
“We believe property purchased with voter-approved funds to protect land for the public should not become a bargaining chip to settle private litigation,” she added.
Then Ramirez encouraged Protect Siesta Key’s members to
“[p]lease continue writing to the County Commissioners before September 22 and ask them to keep 162 Beach Road as public Neighborhood Parkland. Email your objections to commissioners@scgov.net.”