Sarasota County

As the federal government intensifies its immigration crackdown, the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office has emerged as one of the Suncoast’s most active partners with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In recent months, Sheriff Kurt Hoffman’s deputies have patrolled the Everglades immigration jail known as “Alligator Alcatraz” and shuttled immigrants between detention facilities in Florida, earning more than $280,000 in state funding for the work. Meanwhile, the number of ICE detainers — which keep people up to 48 hours past their release date for possible detention and deportation — have quadrupled this past year inside the already crowded county jail.

The same Suncoast lawmakers who voted earlier this year to let charter schools move into underused public campuses have stayed quiet as a Miami-based charter operator’s early push to occupy local schools set off confusion and concern among parents and educators.Mater Academy, one of Florida’s largest charter school networks, filed notices last week to co-locate inside five Sarasota and Manatee county schools — part of a broader wave of early filings across the state that districts say were submitted prematurely. According to officials, charter operators must wait until Nov. 11 to submit a notice.

Sarasota County is hosting a community cleanup day for South Venice on October 18 from 8 a.m. to noon. Residents are encouraged to throw out old household items and yard waste. Free dumpsters for residential customers of Sarasota County Neighborhood Services will be stationed at the South County Courthouse.

A burn ban went into effect Saturday morning for Sarasota County due to local drought conditions and an increased chance of fire hazards.Under Sarasota County’s burn ban ordinance (Sarasota County Code Section 58-2), burn bans automatically go into effect countywide and prohibit almost all open burning when the Keetch-Byram Drought Index (KBDI) meets or exceeds 500.

Marion County was riddled with storefront gambling dens — until it passed a local ordinance in 2021 that gave deputies more power to shut them down. Within months, the slot-machine parlors vanished.Sumter County saw similar results after adopting its own rules that same year. The 13 gambling businesses once scattered across the rural county are now gone, local officials said.Now Manatee County is preparing to follow their lead. Commissioners voted this week to move forward with a proposal modeled on those counties’ ordinances, hoping to replicate their success in wiping out illegal “arcades” that have long operated with little consequence.

Mater Academy Inc., a Miami-based charter school operator, has submitted notices to occupy three Sarasota County public school campuses, marking a sharp local escalation of the state’s newly expanded “Schools of Hope” law, which allows charters to take over public school facilities.The notices, submitted early Wednesday, target Brookside Middle, Emma E. Booker Elementary and Oak Park School, a K-12 campus that serves students with disabilities. They are among similar notices sent to school districts statewide this week, according to Sarasota County Schools officials.

There are renovations that homeowners can make to give their homes an environmental boost. In Sarasota, a program incentivizes projects by offering rebates and assistance in making ecological changes

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.