The future of the Downtown Community Redevelopment Area in Sarasota has been a point of contention between city and county leaders for years, generating conflict and feeding a well-established narrative about two local governments not seeing eye to eye. So it was a bit jarring in September when County Commissioners voted to let the issue die and hardly anyone noticed.
At a hearing setting the budget for the 2015–2016 fiscal year, with a resolution listed on the meeting agenda as item 2C and described simply as a resolution “relating to the Downtown Community Redevelopment Area located in the City of Sarasota,” commissioners voted unanimously to let the Downtown CRA sunset in November 2016, 30 years after it was created. The item was written as such that no city officials even showed up to argue the case for the CRA’s continued existence; they didn’t realize for another two days that a vote in fact had been held to just let it die. “We need to cease one effort before we start another,” said County Commissioner Paul Caragiulo.
