- October 23, 2024
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The finish line is in sight. Yay.
Election years can get to you. They’re exasperating and, most certainly, mentally exhausting.
That is, if you’re paying attention to the candidates and their pandering. And if you are and haven’t mailed in your ballot or gone to your early voting poll over the past few days, time is waning. You still can get focused and informed on the candidates and their positions on issues and on the meaning of and potential ramifications of Florida’s six constitutional amendments and the local ballot issues.
The Observer has tried to assist voters over the past two months. The box below contains all of our recommendations and links to our elections coverage and editorials on YourObserver.com.
This week, in our final installment of recommendations, we are focusing on the three Sarasota City Commission races.
While Longboat Key residents have no say in the voting for Sarasota City Commission seats, the business and governance of the city is crucial to Longboat Key. So much of what happens in the city spills over and affects Longboat Key.
So much of voting comes down to personalities, political affiliations and the candidates’ positions on issues, likability, competence and performance.
But instead of addressing those particulars among the six City Commission candidates, we urge city voters to go beyond merely judging one candidate against the other. Take time to assess the greater picture — what has occurred over the past four years in the city and the current state of the city.
The current state isn’t referring to the aftermath of Hurricanes Helene and Milton. City commissioners had no control over those two destructive storms. And while there are some who still may want to bellyache about debris pickup, c’mon, in the overall scheme that should be, at most, a minor, minor factor. Actually, it shouldn’t be one at all in the totality of the policies the commissioners addressed over the past four years.
There will be plenty of time for post-mortems on the storms.
Instead, when you assess the past as part of the referendum on the candidates, three issues should be top of mind: the local economy, public safety and quality of life.
Once this region emerged from the economic disruptions and contractions from COVID, the city has experienced extraordinarily strong economic health.
Here is one measurement: Capital flows where it is welcome.
Over the past four years, from 2020-2023, the value of building permits issued in the city totaled $1.84 billion, or an annual average of $459.8 million.
Compared to the four years prior to COVID, from 2015 to 2018, the value of permits was $1.4 billion. And from 2009 to 2013, the annual value of permits never topped $200 million a year.
Capital flows where it is welcome.
Likewise, this investment propelled a real estate market in which the city’s property values have almost tripled since 2016 — from $6.7 billion to $18.3 billion. In the past four years, values have risen an astonishing 56%.
By comparison, Bradenton’s property values increased 39.7% in the past four years to $5.9 billion.
Employment shows similar health. From 2020, as we were just coming out of the COVID job wipeout, up to 2024, overall employment rose 15.9% — an increase of 3,906 jobs. Bradenton added 2,596 jobs, a 15.1% increase, in the same period.
Prior to COVID, from 2015 to 2018, total employment rose 1,410, an increase of 5.5%.
The number of businesses operating in the city also has been on an upward trend — from a low of 4,176 in 2021 to 4,474 in 2024, an increase of 298, or 7.1%.
A final measurement to put an exclamation point on the economic health of the city: The growth in per-capita personal income:
2020 $66,878
2021 $70,884
2022 $69,376
2023 $84,035
That’s a 25.6% increase over four years, or 6.4% per year.
Of course, the “we don’t want growth” naysayers likely would say the robust statistics above are not really all that great because of inflation and population growth.
Yes, to an extent, inflation has pushed up everyone’s wages, which explains some of the increase in per capita personal income.
But their bigger bugaboo would be population growth. There’s the perception that the city’s population exploded after COVID, thanks to so many people fleeing the tax hells of the Northeast, Michigan and Illinois.
The data don’t show it. City population:
2020 57,683 / -
2021 55,386 / -3.9%
2022 56,489 / +1.9%
2023 57,005 / +0.9%
Population actually has declined slightly since 2020.
The sum of it all: The local Sarasota economy is strong. It would not be so if the City Commission spent the past four years enacting more and more burdensome ordinances and increasing taxes.
Instead, the current City Commission and city administration lowered the city’s property-tax millage rate twice — in 2021 and 2022, an 8% decrease altogether.
Those two reductions are key factors in the health of every local and state economy. As economists Arthur Laffer and Stephen Moore have shown in their annual Rich States, Poor States rankings since 2008, areas with declining tax and regulatory burdens always show stronger and faster economic and income growth than those with rising tax burdens.
Government policies matter.
Public safety is one of the most important measurements for every region, city and neighborhood.
On this score, the city of Sarasota has had a favorable trend. After a peak of 2,141 violent offenses in 2018, the number every year has fallen between 1,780 and 1,950. Overall serious crime for the first eight months of 2024 shows a 25.8% decline compared to the same period in 2023.
As they should, city commissioners and the city administration see public safety as a top priority.
The city has increased the number of sworn police officers in the past eight years from 161 in 2015 to 190 in 2023, an 18% increase. Sarasota has the highest ratio of police officers per 1,000 residents of any city south of St. Petersburg — 3.29 officers.
Two other public safety measurements:
To be sure, this is the most subjective area on which to measure city commissioners’ performance with data. Quality of life to one person is not the same to another.
Nonetheless, consider the following contributing to an improved quality of life over the past four years:
Altogether, the city of Sarasota is and, for the past four years, has been on a strong, rising trajectory.
Sure, it has issues.
City commissioners need to be vigilant about spending. City employees per 1,000 population have risen 28.7% since 2016.
Flooding and drainage infrastructure have risen to urgent in terms of critical neighborhood issues. After the recent flooding of the Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall, surely discussions will ensue on constructing a new center on the bayfront.
But none of these issues rises to the level of negating or reversing what has been accomplished. Nor do these issues make a case for dumping or replacing the three incumbents —Mayor Liz Alpert and Commissioners Kyle Battie and Erik Arroyo.
Indeed, if you inspect the positions of the three commission challengers — Sequoia Felton, Ron Kashden and Kathy Kelley Ulrich, they all want policies that would stifle the city’s healthy economy. They want more rules, more regulations, more bureaucracy. In the name of being neighborhood advocates, the challengers are echoing calls for more group-rule democracy over individual property rights.
They say we must stop “overdevelopment.” That is the anthem of anti-incumbent candidates in the region’s 2024 elections. In reality, it is a euphemism for wanting to stop what they don’t like: population growth and development in their neighborhoods.
In 1681, Sir William Petty, a friend of Sir Isaac Newton, became fascinated by the fact London had grown larger than Paris and Rome combined. In an essay called “The Growth, Increase and Multiplication of Mankind,” Petty’s research concluded that an increase in population is essential to the flourishing of prosperity.
While the commission challengers make the hackneyed and false charge that the incumbents are beholden to developers, the truth is all five members of the City Commission have been respectful of balancing development, property rights and the rule of city law.
We’ve often said the litmus test for incumbents seeking re-election is how they have performed in office. The state of the city of Sarasota proves the incumbents have done well. There is no need to change.
We recommend: Kyle Scott Battie, Liz Alpert and Erik Arroyo.
