Item scheduled for Oct. 22 meeting in downtown Sarasota
During a regular meeting on Oct. 22, at the request of Sarasota County Commissioner Joe Neunder, he and his board colleagues will have a new discussion that could lead to reconsideration of the board’s denial of county funding this fiscal year for the Early Learning Coalition of Sarasota County.
Neunder raised the issue during a 41-minute, pared-down commission meeting conducted on Oct. 8, as Hurricane Milton was making its way toward Southwest Florida.
“This is a time-sensitive issue,” he noted that day, but he asked only that the discussion be scheduled as at a future meeting.
He was raising the matter, he continued, after having had the opportunity to talk recently with one of three new members of the Early Learning Coalition board of directors, who all had been appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis.
One of them is Kevin Cooper of Sarasota, who was a long-time member of the county’s Planning Commission and is a candidate for the Sarasota Memorial Hospital Board in the Nov. 5 General Election.
“This organization is somewhat of a quasi-governmental agency,” Neunder explained of the Early Learning Coalition, referencing his exchange with Cooper.
“I think we do have the $300,000 monetary amount” that was requested, Neunder added, noting that it remained set aside for human services and behavioral health programs.
As The Sarasota News Leader reported, on June 5, as the board members were preparing to vote on funding requests for the 2025 fiscal year for organizations that provide human services, Chair Michael Moran passed out to the other commissioners a copy of a document showing how he had adjusted the ranking of the applications that the board-appointed Human Services Advisory Council (HSAC) had recommended for funding. The Early Learning Coalition was not among those that Moran called eligible for funding, based on its score.
Nonetheless, Commissioner Mark Smith tried to convince his colleagues to grant the money to the Coalition (ELC), stressing that he believes the organization is eligible for the support, in accord with the criteria the board members had set.
That morning, during remarks as part of the Open to the Public comment period, Janet Kahn, CEO of the Early Learning Coalition, had emphasized the importance of families’ access to affordable child care. “The county government’s support has been significant over the years,” she told the commissioners. She and her staff recently had been talking to representatives of businesses and “all the other entities that have employees who are impacted by this,” she added.
She said she hoped that the commissioners would accept the recommendations of the HSAC “and follow the process that you yourselves have established.”
Yet, even though Moran allowed Kahn to make further remarks during the later board discussion, no one other than Smith supported the Coalition’s funding request.
Rep. McFarland’s 2023 scolding
In 2023, Moran also eliminated the Coalition from his list of organizations recommended for funding support — that time, for the 2024 fiscal year, which ended on Sept. 30.
However, during a subsequent meeting — after state Rep. Fiona McFarland, R-Sarasota, chastised the commissioners for voting against the financial support — Moran was the only board member to oppose the funding during a new vote.
McFarland had stressed that the Coalition program for which the county support was being sought is for children up to age 5. Those are the youngsters for which no public school options exist, she pointed out. Parents, sitters and daycare are the option for those youngsters, McFarland added. Then she emphasized, “Day care today is the second-highest household expense, behind housing …”
Moreover, McFarland told the board members, research has shown that only 40% of the children in kindergarten in Sarasota County “are actually ready to be in kindergarten.”
She also referenced research demonstrating how critical success in school is to the well being and financial stability of children as they grow into adults.
Further, McFarland said, state research had shown that for every dollar invested in school readiness, $7 is saved in later expenses for social services.
Nonetheless, during the subsequent, Sept. 26, 2023 board discussion, Moran said in reference to county funding for the Coalition, “We’re drifting way too close to socialism …”
What about other funding options?
On Oct. 8, after Neunder asked for the new board discussion, Moran replied, “I have no problem at all” in scheduling that. However, Moran continued, the commissioners needed to consider certain variables in regard to state matches.
“I’m curious,” Moran said, “why the [private] foundations [in the county] haven’t funded [the Early Learning Coalition] — what their reasoning is …”
Commissioner Smith then expressed his support for Neunder’s request. The Early Learning Coalition, he added, “is incredibly important. … They do need our funding in order to get some state matching funding.”
Smith further noted, “You can’t over-emphasize how important those first years are in the development [of children].”
Then Moran explained that the commission had received what he referred to as “legal guidance” that the County Commission did not have to be the entity that provided the funds to make the state matching money possible, though he also characterized the state funding as a “heavy jump [in] that it’s another taxpayer match …”
“The intent is for a local match,” he stressed, not a county match with taxpayers’ dollars.
“I would like to see very clearly whether [the Coalition] asked any of the private foundations to fund this locally and what [Coalition leaders] were told … in detail,” Moran continued. “That would be something I would find meaningful and helpful in this discussion.”
After Moran reiterated his support for Neunder’s request, Moran told County Administrator Jonathan Lewis that consensus existed for such an agenda item to be scheduled.
Lewis responded that he would “tee up” the discussion by providing the board members details of the application for the funding in the current fiscal year, which began Oct. 1. He added that he also would give them information related to the county Human Services Advisory Council’s scoring of the Coalition application among all of those that had been submitted to that council for vetting for 2025 fiscal year county funding support.
Those materials are in the packet for the Oct. 22 meeting, available via a link to Lewis’ scheduled report to the commissioners that day.
In response to Lewis’ Oct. 8 comment about providing the information in advance to the board members, Commissioner Ron Cutsinger said, “That would be good.”
