Public access means serious business in the City of Sarasota. The municipality enshrines in its charter the custodian of public records works for city commissioners, not administration, and Sarasota years ago became a pioneer for providing access to the emails of all city employees. But new challenges bring a new barrier to transparency and have ended one convenience for super-wonks.

Sarasota for years kept a dedicated access terminal in the City Auditor and Clerk’s Office where anyone could search emails for any city employee. It’s the sort of service press and self-proclaimed watchdogs adored, though its popularity ebbed through the years as the noses of the curious poked into their personal computers instead of stations at City Hall. Still, it seems a distinct loss for citizens that last year, the station shut down.

The shift came with a switch toward cloud computing, Sarasota IT Director Herminio Rodriguez explains, which brought a long-overdue improvement to physical security. Sarasota previously maintained seven terabytes (that’s more than 7.3 million megabytes) worth of email in servers kept in Sarasota, requiring warehousing for a great deal of hardware. Now, the city keeps emails on a server in Virginia, with backups in Nevada and California. The records get stored on the cloud as part of a government contract with Microsoft.

Why’s this better? For one thing, Rodriguez says, Florida’s a lousy place to keep anything important. You face a threat of natural disasters like hurricanes. It also costs more to properly cool hard drives and keep power on during even mild thunderstorms. Cloud computing also brings protections from hacking, as the government firewalls stopping hostile parties from breaking into city files are the same barriers protecting the U.S. Department of Homeland Securities records. Since the city fell victim to a ransomware attack in 2016, that’s a tough benefit to ignore.

But make no mistake, this comes at a cost for citizens when it comes to transparency. Anyone logging into Sarasota’s website can still look at non-exempt emails sent among Sarasota’s city commissioners and the three top charter officials, but to check any other emails at City Hall requires a public information request. But for those trying to find out information about how city resources get managed (and sometimes mismanaged), scavenging through records seems less attractive when you put everything in writing.

That might explain the grumpy tone of a recent request for information from local gadfly Martin Hyde (though those who know Hyde realize an aggressive tone accompanies most of his communications with City Hall). He sought information on a county commission candidate who resigned from the Police Complaints Committee. That candidate since dropped out of the race, so any dirt will likely be inconsequential now, but it bugged Martin he couldn’t poke around city email on his own. Hyde also routinely critiques city administration spending, and he’d rather not have every move called in advance. “It immediately sends up a flare,” says Hyde, who finds requests that turn up embarrassing information don’t get met as quickly as ones that never hit paydirt.

Assistant City Manager John Lege says the city remains transparent as ever. If a request for info is as simple as an email dump, it will be met quickly, and there will be no charge for less than 30 minutes of work—Hyde’s most recent request got met at no charge. It’s also worth noting in the history of email, this process has been how nearly every jurisdiction in Florida conducted business. Sarasota’s always been different though.

Incidentally, Rodriguez tells me the city does keep one physical backup for email in Sarasota, though its on a flat file that can’t be searched as easily as servers, or as efficiently as staff can pull records from the cloud. But I know the City Clerk’s Office, which makes most decisions on record access, would prefer keeping a station open.

Most members of the press favor easy access for obvious reasons, but I’ll concede Rodriguez’s desire for physical and digital security offers the rare decent excuse for limits. It would be great, though, if a priority were placed on restoring public station in the future, whenever a coming technological advance allows it.

Jacob Ogles is contributing senior editor for SRQ Media Group. 

Ringling College's primary mission is to provide programs leading to degrees that prepare students to be discerning visual thinkers and ethical practitioners in their chosen area of art and design.

But we believe a college also has a responsibility to be both a force for good in the world and a good citizen of its community. So in addition to our degree programs, we offer many courses, lectures, exhibitions and various art-related services to the local and regional community through our galleries, libraries, continuing education, lifelong learning, volunteer community service programs and soon the new Sarasota Museum of Art.

One way we also interact with the local community is through our Collaboratory program. This initiative started a few years ago in partnership with The Patterson Foundation and provides creative, experiential learning opportunities to all Ringling College students. I have written about the Collaboratory program before, but my focus in this article is about a special strategic partnership that resulted from the Collaboratory with the newly opened Art Ovation Hotel.

On the corner of Cocoanut and Palm, this Marriott Signature hotel not only provides first class accomodations but also promotes and showcases the arts. After all, it is in Sarasota–the epicenter of arts and culture in Florida. Owners envision doing this by hosting curated exhibits, live performances, art-related tours, classes, talks and workshops for their expected major clientele–a national and international audience of art enthusiasts.

To accomplish this mission, the hotel works with Ringling College students, faculty and staff as a primary partner to establish this art connection.  

Let me give you an example. The hotel’s inaugural exhibition is an art show entitled: Legacy: An Exhibition by Ringling College of Art and Design Faculty and Alumni. This wonderful show features work by some of the most celebrated alumni and faculty of Ringling College. I invite you to tour the Hotel and view this stellar work. The idea is that art exhibitions like this will be shown roughly every quarter and the shows will primarily feature the work of Ringling College students, faculty, alumni, etc.

The College’s partnership with Art Ovation Hotel helps to fulfill the College’s commitment to the common good in our region. It supports the university’s growth and economic development efforts; facilitates and develops relationships with community organizations, local governments, and civic groups; and strengthens the College’s relationship with its neighbors.

Of course, the Hotel also works with other arts organizations in Sarasota as it will feature theater, opera, poetry readings, dance performances, etc. to showcase the plethora of arts opportunities in this wonderfully creative community.

Art Ovation Hotel and Ringling College created this partnership and it is being sustained through the efforts of the Hotel. For example, our Business of Art and Design students just made presentations to the top management of the Hotel regarding ideas for initiatives for the next academic year. As a result, the Art Ovation Foundation was established with the purpose of funding various philanthropic projects and furthering a commitment to education by providing scholarships for Ringling College students and collaborative, curriculum-based programming and internships related to the this partnership.

Dr. Larry Thompson is president of Ringling College of Art and Design. 

Goodwill Manasota invites area families to enjoy the Good Readers Program, which will begin anew in Manatee County later this month. Each of the monthly installments will take place on Saturday mornings at 11:00 a.m. in one of the four Goodwill Manasota Bookstores in Sarasota and Manatee counties. Goodwill Ambassadors (volunteers) will read to groups of children for an hour, while parents are free to browse the store or listen with their child. When story time ends, each child will receive a free book. First launched in 2014, the Good Readers Program works to engage young minds and foster a lifelong love of reading in children. Studies show that children exposed to books at a young age are more likely to do better both academically and behaviorally – reading is the single most important activity for the development of literacy skills and is critically linked to future success.  

Goodwill Manasota

For the past 88 years, anglers have competed in the Sarasota Tarpon Tournament; the oldest, continuous running, public tarpon tournament in Florida. It started in 1929 by the Sarasota Angler Club as an attempt to bolster the local economy. The tradition continues this May and June. Described as one of the most exciting fish to catch, tarpon are known for spectacular leaps and determined fights. More battles seem to be won by the tarpon rather than the angler, making the reward of catching one momentous! More than $60,000 has been raised in the past eight years for charity. This year, money raised will benefit the Coastal Conservation Association of Florida (CCA) and Suncoast Charities for Children. 

Sarasota Tarpon Tournament

The Leapfrog Group announced Sarasota Memorial Hospital received an “A” for protecting patients from preventable injuries and harm and for meeting the highest safety standards in the U.S. Leapfrog issues nationwide hospital safety grades twice each year and assigns an A, B, C, D or F grade based on individual hospital performance in preventing harm and death, such as medical errors, injuries, accidents and infections among patients in their care. SMH was one of 750 hospitals nationwide that received Leapfrog’s highest mark this grading period; this is the fourth consecutive “A” that SMH has earned for its performance since the hospital began participating in Leapfrog’s survey in 2016. “Receiving an ‘A’ safety grade means a hospital is among the best in the country for preventing these terrible problems and putting their patients first, 24 hours a day,” said Leah Binder, president and CEO of The Leapfrog Group. 

Sarasota Memorial Healthcare

On April 23, Selah Freedom conducted a groundbreaking ceremony for Julie’s Place and Graduate Housing in Manatee County. Both of these projects are being added to Selah Freedom’s long-term residential housing campus, which is the largest residential program for survivors of sex trafficking in the state of Florida. Graduates of Selah Freedom’s Residential Program have received trauma therapy, a personalized education plan, job placement, mentorship as well as legal and medical aid. Graduates living in this beautiful home are still connected to resources and community on the Selah Freedom main campus, while also having an opportunity to pursue their personal and professional goals. 100% of the survivors in the Selah Freedom residential program are pursuing their education and career goals. 75% of the Selah Freedom graduates never return to the streets.  Julie’s Place is a 3000 square foot activity center dedicated to a special counselor who “believes all survivors have the resilience and spirit to overcome their past,” said the Anonymous donor for Julie’s Place. 

Selah Freedom

As part of its employer partnership model, CareerEdge provides incumbent worker training grants for its employer partners.  The companies are also encouraged to leverage these funds and put forth their own dollars to up-skill their workers.  In 2017, CareerEdge saw the largest workforce development investment by employers in its history for employee trainings and programs. CareerEdge invested over $320,000 in incumbent worker, job seeker and internship training programs, while organizations financed almost $1,300,000. This increase illustrates a major cultural shift by these companies and their acknowledgment of the need to fill skills-gaps by training and supporting credential attainment in the workplace. This past year, 404 employees were trained through CareerEdge incumbent worker training grants, of which 39% had participated in prior trainings. Meaning that individuals are not remaining stagnant after training but are continuing to move-up and gain skills within the company.  On average, individuals earned an 8% wage increase within two years of training, and 195 received promotions.    

CareerEdge