This story was originally published by Suncoast Searchlight.
The meeting began with roaring boos.
Then came the yells from the gallery. And accusations from attendees that they were misled by Sarasota officials.
Roughly 80 people had come to City Hall on Monday evening for an open house on the city’s parking situation, which has rankled residents and business owners for months.
Someone screamed that they should all start a protest in the parking lot. Another encouraged the news cameras to follow. Within moments, dozens marched out of the city commission chambers with fury.
That was all just three minutes after the meeting had begun. One city commissioner could be heard muttering, “This is a disaster.”
Many attendees had told Suncoast Searchlight they thought the forum would be a free-ranging discussion between city officials, residents and business owners over parking concerns. Instead, they were treated to a presentation about the parking division’s finances. Once they arrived, attendees were told there would be no public comment. Officials instead asked them to put their thoughts and questions onto blue pieces of paper for officials to answer after their presentation.
City Planning Director Steve Cover, who has overseen parking operations since the parking division’s manager left for a private-sector job in July, hosted Monday’s open house.
A public notice from Cover before the meeting did not state whether the public would be allowed to speak but said the city would “answer questions” and “receive public input” to “help foster an informed community discussion.” A flyer for the meeting also encouraged attendees to “Share Your Thoughts” and “Help Shape The Future.”
City spokesperson Luke Mocherman said the parking division chose the format because officials already had heard weeks of public input at previous meetings. This time, he said, the goal was to focus on facts and figures to give the public a better understanding of the city’s parking challenges and possible solutions.
But the format angered attendees, many of whom waved the sheets of blue paper in anger before storming out.
“This is rude to those of us that had to shut our businesses down and lose money for the day so we could arrive and be told that we would not be allowed to comment on the issue,” said Neil Jennings, a co-owner of downtown Sarasota’s Salon 41.
Residents were not the only ones surprised by how the meeting turned out. Afterwards, Commissioner Jen Ahearn-Koch called the proceedings, “A big missed opportunity.”
“I was not expecting the format to be like that,” Ahearn-Koch told Suncoast Searchlight. “I had expected more of a town hall discussion and conversation, much more collaboration as far as businesses and their input to our parking situation.”
The 90-minute meeting was not recorded or livestreamed online. The parking division’s PowerPoint presentation was not immediately available to be shared, as Mocherman said staffers had only finished working on it that day.
The meeting brought months of simmering tensions over parking to a boil. Business owners claim city policies are driving customers to places like University Town Center, where parking is free.
Sarasota’s parking division is known as an “enterprise fund,” meaning its budget is supposed to be entirely self-sustaining through fees, citations and permits. However, since 2013, the division has received at least $3.9 million from the city’s general fund through subsidies and loans to stay afloat.
Reporting by Suncoast Searchlight also found that while the $15.6 million St. Armands parking garage filled an urgent parking need out of the city’s barrier island, it has not lived up to its financial projections, and the city has had to pitch in $1.2 million to help pay down the debt.
More recently, the city commission approved a $400,000 loan in September 2025, to make up for a funding gap at the St. Armands parking garage caused by the historic storm season that battered Sarasota the previous year.
The city commission attempted to address the problem earlier in the summer by lengthening the on-street paid parking hours by six hours a day — from 8 a.m. to midnight on Monday through Saturday — and adding paid hours on Sunday afternoons.
After widespread revolt and complaints at meetings, the commission paused the policy after about five weeks.
City presentation on parking overcome by spectacle
In the wake of a revolt over extended parking hours, the division offered a few other alternatives: a business validation program, expanded pay stations, increased hourly rates and special pricing during evenings and events.
Free, citywide parking would be feasible only with a special district funded by business owners. Those assessments would come out to $506.63 a month, Cover said.
Using Placer.ai, a technology that uses cellphone data to estimate people’s movements, Cover said the city has recorded more visitors to downtown than it did a year ago. That runs counter to business owners’ accounts of a sharp decline in customers this summer.
“There hasn’t been a drop in the number of people that are coming downtown,” Cover said. “There’s actually been a slight increase.”
Many in the audience shook their heads at that.
Cover also said that any effort to require developers of new buildings to pay assessments or impact fees for new parking infrastructure could run afoul of SB 180 — a Florida law that bans local governments from putting “more restrictive or burdensome regulations” on development after a major hurricane.
Outside City Hall, those who walked out formed an impromptu protest and press conference for the news media who followed them. Local dentist Karl Lewis criticized the city for not allowing more robust comments from residents.
“Working-class people need an opportunity to be able to speak, and they were stripped of it today,” Lewis said. “We live here, too, and we pay taxes just like the retirees do, and we need to have a voice that’s going to help shape the future.”
Inside the meeting chambers, Cover attempted to rein in a rowdy gallery, one that regularly shouted out questions, snickered amongst themselves and made a habit of shaking their heads and murmuring. The planning director’s stern pleas for attendees to stop interrupting were ignored.
When Cover took a question from the gallery, Michael Rattigan, seated in the front row, asked whether attendees were allowed to ask questions or speak.
“I just want to make sure the information we’re presenting is clear,” Cover said.
From then on, nearly every question shouted from the crowd was framed as a request for clarification. By the end of the meeting, Cover had largely abandoned the format that had caused the uproar as he and Parking Operations Manager Philip Deveau spoke directly to attendees.
At one point, as Cover listed other city functions that operate as enterprise funds, he included the Parks and Recreation Department. Deputy City Manager Jennifer Jorgenson then rushed to the dais, grabbed the microphone from Cover, and clarified for the room that the Parks and Recreation Department is not an enterprise fund.
Occasionally, the chamber’s door would swing open, and the quiet hall would fill with sound waves from the lobby of a dozen voices complaining about the meeting.
Chris Voelker, the owner of State Street Eating House + Cocktails and a member of the city’s Downtown Improvement District board, put together a survey of Sarasota businesses before the meeting.
Of the 121 respondents, most owned a business downtown.
About 83% of respondents also said they did not want any major decisions made until November, after the city commission elections and Florida voters decided on expansions to the homestead exemption proposed under Amendment 3.
Most also support some version of special rates and enforcement hours for peak tourism season. Sarasota business is still heavily dependent on tourism and snowbirds, who flock back to the city around November and stay through Easter.
As Cover began to wind down the meeting, the chamber door swung open again. A woman’s voice from the lobby rang out: “Boy, that was a disaster!”
This story was produced by Suncoast Searchlight, a nonprofit newsroom of the Community News Collaborative serving Sarasota, Manatee, and DeSoto counties; Francesca Abarca contributed to this story. Christian Casale is a local government/politics reporter for Suncoast Searchlight. Email him at christian@suncoastsearchlight.org.
