Flooding has hit our community hard recently, beginning with Hurricane Ian in 2022 and then the trio of storms in 2024 of Debbie, Helene, and Milton. These storms brought unprecedented flooding to areas that never used to flood and hardship as structures, vehicles, homes, and belongings were destroyed or severely damaged.

This flooding occurred in multiple counties in Florida, but we felt it very hard here in Sarasota County. The first instinct from the public was to blame development for the flooding. Slowly, we have become more knowledgeable with independent consultant reports and the experience of residents who have lived on the waterways for decades. It became clear that stormwater and flooding maintenance in several forms was a big part, but not the only reason, for flooding, especially in Laurel Meadows and along Phillippi Creek.

The Sarasota County Commission has held two workshops on stormwater and flooding, largely driven by options given by staff--which started with flooding level of service and then development and building regulation, with maintenance largely taking a back seat to one-time capital projects and regulation.

We are also seeing this with the county update of the Little Sarasota Bay Watershed Plan, which is supposed to address flooding and water quality. County consultants have confirmed the plan will not address maintenance of the bodies of water flowing into the bay, but only capital projects.

Regulation and new projects will do us no good if we don’t take a full and comprehensive public examination of maintenance level of service, which is different than flooding level of service, and we must incorporate maintenance into all of our plans.

The Commission should schedule a stand-alone workshop focusing only on publicly examining the maintenance level of service of our public stormwater including creeks, ditches, canals, and sloughs. This workshop should examine a historical look at maintenance, a current look at maintenance, and setting policy on level of maintenance going forward.

The workshop should examine historical level of service 20 years ago, 10 years ago, 5 years ago, and 3 years ago. It should examine who is currently performing maintenance and any contracts with vendors. The workshop should examine the management and oversight of those contracts, including any auditing, to determine that vendors are actually performing the services the county is paying for, and whether the services are being performed to the specs in the contracts.

Finally, the workshop should examine the stormwater maintenance budget and the expected level of service moving forward.

The Commission needs to take more control of these workshops and address the maintenance deficiencies in a comprehensive and long-term way, not just through one-time fixes.

The Argus Foundation applauds the County Commission for focusing on stormwater. We urge commissioners to focus on maintenance levels of service of stormwater before hurricane season begins.

Christine Robinson is the Executive Director of The Argus Foundation.