Sarasota County

Sarasota Assistant County Administrator Mark Cunningham resigned on Wednesday, becoming the highest-ranking official to step down in the wake of revelations about widespread failures in the county’s stormwater management system.County officials did not disclose the reason for Cunningham’s resignation but said in an emailed statement that County Administrator Jonathan Lewis had accepted it.

Tropical Storm Debby didn’t look like trouble.No hurricane-force winds. No mass evacuations. Just forecasts, quietly urgent, calling for historic rainfall.Sarasota County officials weren’t alarmed. Days before landfall, the public works director — who two years earlier had called the county “one of the most flood-protected communities in the state, if not the nation” — went on vacation.On Aug. 5, the rain came. Then the flooding. Then the reckoning.

Millions of Americans came out to voice their opinions as part of the nationwide No Kings Day.

Phillippi Creek in Sarasota County won’t be dredged this hurricane season, no emergency permit issued.

Free legal help offered at Sarasota library covering three key areas of law.

Gifted lands created parks and preserves—now one Sarasota County commissioner is pushing to rezone and sell part of it to himself.

When the Sarasota County Commission narrowly approved a $7.5 million federal disaster recovery grant to a startup nonprofit last fall, it was sold as a cornerstone of workforce recovery for trade apprenticeship programs after Hurricane Ian.Just days after the vote, Jon Mast—CEO of the Building Industry Institute (BII) which received the grant—was photographed at a party, cigar in mouth, beer in hand, donning a custom T-shirt that read: “$7.5 Million.”The optics of the photo did not sit well with many Sarasota residents.And in a late move April 22, the county commissioners reallocated the grant.

Sarasota Bay managers have managed a rare win in sea grass health and recovery in lagoons and bay around the state.

A six-acre wildfire in Naples caused homeowners to evacuate, and Sarasota County added itself to the growing list of counties with an outdoor burn ban