After staff review of historical data and new savings, commissioners express more optimism about county’s financial situation
Although only two of the five Sarasota County constitutional officers have told the County Commission that they believe they can keep their budget increases to no more than 1.6% for the 2027 fiscal year, the board members indicated at the conclusion of a nearly four-hour-long workshop on Feb. 26 that they feel much more comfortable with the county’s financial outlook for coming years.
On Aug. 19, 2025, during their final budget workshop for the current fiscal year — which began on Oct. 1, 2025 — the commissioners directed County Administrator Jonathan Lewis to plan on holding their first workshop for the 2027 fiscal year budget in February, instead of March, as in the past. They also asked Lewis to let all of the county’s constitutional officers — such as the sheriff and the property appraiser — know that, in an effort to prevent budget gaps in outlying fiscal years, they had set the 1.6% mark as the ceiling for extra county spending out of the General Fund in FY 2027.
During that 2025 budget workshop, the General Fund model showed that the county was predicted to have a shortfall of $25,221,500 in the 2028 fiscal year; that would climb higher in the FY 2029 and FY 2030 fiscal years.
The General Fund pays for the expenses of county departments — and the operations of the constitutional officers — that do not generate sufficient revenue on their own for that purpose. The General Fund is made up largely of the annual property tax revenue.
For months, members of the Sarasota County board have expressed concern about action that the Florida Legislature is expected to take to place one or more referenda on the November General Election ballot that could reduce property tax revenue.
During the Feb. 26 budget workshop, Lewis and the county’s top two financial officers — Deputy County Administrator and Chief Financial Management Officer Steve Botelho and Kim Radtke, director of the Office of Financial Management — reviewed steps that Lewis already had taken to control expenditures for the next fiscal year, along with recommendations for further cuts.
The latest General Fund model — which relied on the board’s proposal for restricted increases in spending for Fiscal Years 2027 through 2030 — showed no deficits. As always, it was based on the county financial staff’s assumptions that 6% less money would be spent than budgeted for each of those years, and revenues would come in 4% higher than the figures projected.
The new model showed that, at the end of the 2030 fiscal year, the county would have about $23 million more than it needed to maintain in its 75-day emergency reserve, for operations in the event of a disaster that prevented the county from collecting any revenue; and the expected $79 million in what staff and the board members call their Economic Uncertainty Fund.
The commissioners seated in 2006 — prior to the start of the Great Recession — agreed to establish the Economic Uncertainty Reserve while the economy was booming. The county budget relied on those extra funds to continue a multitude of services during the recession, staff has pointed out.
During the Feb. 26 workshop, County Administrator Lewis noted that he was working in another area of the state when the Sarasota County board members established that reserve. “As far as I know,” he said, “Sarasota County was the leader in that at the time. A lot of us [in local government work] viewed that as a best practice,” he added, especially as the national bond rating agencies consistently have seen it as a factor in awarding the Sarasota County their top bond ratings.
The budget model does include a set-aside of $25 million for an initiative to restore Casey Key Road, which has failed in several locations over the years as a result of storm damage.
Yet one other detail that staff noted during the workshop is that the revenue generated by the tax-increment financing (TIF) district created to help pay for amenities within the downtown Sarasota Bay Park will remain in the General Fund unless it has been designated for park initiatives.
In November 2020, the City of Sarasota and the county approved an interlocal agreement that established the TIF district, which encompasses an area larger than the park. As the value of property within that district increases, the lower of the two local governments’ millage rate is applied to the new value, with the resulting revenue set aside for park purposes.
The TIF district has a 30-year life, though then-County Commissioner Alan Maio ensured that language in the agreement would enable the county to end the agreement sooner if sufficient revenue accumulated at a faster rate to pay for all of the park projects. (See the related article in this issue about the plans for the new Performing Arts Center in the park.)
At one point during the Feb. 26 discussion, Commissioner Tom Knight asked whether Lewis wanted the board members to approve a motion directing him to keep the undedicated county TIF revenue in the General Fund.
“If you all don’t tell me not to [keep it in the General Fund],” Lewis replied, “this is what I’m doing.”
No new taxes
The commissioners did make it clear last week that they would impose no new taxes on county residents, although staff — at their direction in June 2025 — had researched options for generating more revenue. Among those was the imposition of a Public Service Tax (PST), which some municipalities — including the City of Sarasota — charge on utility bills.
That is an option available only to charter counties, such as Sarasota, Deputy County Administrator Botelho noted.
In 2017, then-County Administrator Tom Harmer proposed the implementation of a PST because the county was facing budget shortfalls in future years. Ultimately, the majority of the commissioners seated at that time refused to enact such an extra expense for their constituents.
Instead, in early 2018, the commissioners engaged with staff in a workshop during which a number of recurring expenses were eliminated from the budget for the 2019 fiscal year and future years. The total was about $5.6 million.
Likewise, on Feb. 26, none of the board members expressed an interest in establishing Municipal Service Taxing Units (MSTUs) to bring in extra funding for the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office and the county’s libraries.
Further, the commissioners decided not to pause four county capital projects whose construction has not begun. As The Sarasota News Leader has reported, Commissioner Knight has suggested that option to his board colleagues several times since he was elected to his seat in November 2024.
No one offered a comment when Deputy County Administrator Botelho showed them the relevant slide with details about the anticipated operating expenses after those four facilities have been completed. Botelho did note that staff expects revenue generated by the Nathan Benderson Park Indoor Sports Complex and Boathouse to cover the cost of salaries of the staff members who will work there.
(The County Commission has committed $20 million out its Tourist Development Tax — or, “bed tax” — revenue to that structure at Benderson Park. During a July 2025 presentation, staff estimated the total construction expense would be between $60 million and $70 million.)
No operating expenses were attached to the expansion and renovation of the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office Headquarters on Cattleridge Boulevard in Sarasota, the slide also noted.
With no discussion about those projects having taken place during the workshop, the News Leader confirmed with county staff that the initiatives would remain on track.
Among Lewis’ recommendations that won approval on Feb. 26, the board members agreed to halt a Breeze Transit route that has been circulating between downtown Sarasota hotels and the Sarasota Bradenton International Airport, as well as the extension of the Siesta Key trolley route to downtown Sarasota. The total recurring savings was put at $360,000 a year.
Staff also was able to cut $500,000 in annual fuel expenses for Breeze Transit, and it will save another $500,000 each year by reducing contract spending, Lewis said.
Further, the Office of the County Attorney will lower its annual spending by $100,000, a slide showed.
County departments are expected to have a reduction of approximately $7.1 million in their expenditures for the 2027 fiscal year, Lewis also noted, to hit the mark of the 1.6% limitation in the General Fund budget.
“Now that doesn’t include employee compensation” for non-union members, Lewis cautioned. However, the expected collective bargaining raises were factored into the model, he said. “We’ll deal with that as we work through the budget development,” he added.
“I feel a whole lot better now,” Commissioner Knight said near the end of the workshop, given the fact that “some things have popped up to help us,” he told Lewis.
Chair Ron Cutsinger agreed: “I think we’re feeling a little bit better about things right now.”
“This is a great thing to see,” Commissioner Joe Neunder said of the latest budget model.
Still, Neunder noted, “We don’t know if [all of the constitutional officers] can come in [with increases limited to 1.6% for FY 2027], and what I’m hearing is maybe it’s just not possible.”
The following is a summary of the constitutional officers’ Feb. 26 reports to the commissioners about their projected budgets for the 2027 fiscal year:
Clerk of the Circuit Court and County Comptroller
“I don’t want you to think I’m not being cooperative, or that I’m not trying to help in any way that I can, ’cause I will,” Karen Rushing, clerk of the Circuit Court and county comptroller, told the commissioners. “But at this moment, I don’t see how I can meet the [state] mandates with a restriction of 1.6%. … But I will do everything that I can to be supportive.”
Property Appraiser
“We will do what we can, ’cause we’re not going to hit 1.6[%],” Property Appraiser Bill Furst said.
Donna Perkins, the finance director for the Property Appraiser’s Office, explained to the commissioners that most of the expenses of the operation are related to obtaining the data necessary for the staff’s work.
“We do have some contracts that are coming up for renewal,” she continued, “so I’m anticipating there will be an increase there.”
Yet, one contract that will be ending, she added, will result in some savings.
While Furst’s staff members will do what they can to keep the FY 2027 budget as low as possible, Perkins said, she expects increases in both the required contributions to the Florida Retirement System for the employees and health insurance expenses.
“There’s no way we could come in at 1.6%,” she told the board members. Yet, she said, “We’ll do our best to control those items that we can.”
Sheriff’s Office
Sheriff Kurt A. Hoffman talked of numerous steps that he and his staff have taken or will take to keep the agency’s budget increase to 1.6% for FY 2027.
Among them, he explained that the Sheriff’s Office had been able to reduce its number of positions by 14, and he is not planning on any new full-time employees for the next fiscal year.
Further, Hoffman said, “We negotiated new hospital rates … that are consistent with a public entity …” He added, “It’s taken a long time” to arrive at the agreement, but the result will be “six-figure savings, for sure.”
Yet another decision, Hoffman continued, has been to keep 82 of the agency’s vehicles instead of purchasing new ones. “That’s millions of dollars in savings,” he pointed out, given the expense of the equipment that has to be installed in new Sheriff’s Office vehicles.
Col. Brian Woodring, the chief deputy, also has begun requiring the use of pool vehicles in some situations, Hoffman said.
Tax Collector
Tax Collector Mike Moran, who was elected to the position in November 2024 as he was preparing to step down from his final term as a county commissioner, stressed multiple times to the commissioners, “We do not pull [money] from the General Fund.”
He presented multiple slides as he repeated that fact throughout his Feb. 26 presentation.
Further, Moran noted several times that money left over from the services his staff provides to the public, after all of the office’s expenses have been covered, is turned over to the county.
However, he criticized the Office of Financial Management staff for what he said was a lack of “full transparency to the public” by including figures in slides for the workshop that day that, he contended, did not accurately reflect aspects of his budgeting process.
Supervisor of Elections
“Our plan is to meet the 1.6[%] expectations,” Sarasota County Supervisor of Elections Ron Turner told the commissioners.
“Looking at our numbers now,” he added, “we should be able to do that for this upcoming fiscal year. It’s probably not a trick we’ll be able to repeat for multiple years, because of changes,” such as growth in the county, “changes in technology; needing more staff, more locations, because we want to continue to keep our elections secure, fair and accessible in Sarasota County,” Turner continued. I know it’s a high priority for all of us in this room.”
He pointed out, “We have a great reputation here in Sarasota County and around the state of Florida for our elections, and I want to continue to be on that leading edge in elections administration.”