The Sarasota City Commission met on January 5, 2026, from 9:00 a.m. to 3:42 p.m. to address a wide-ranging agenda including board reports, consent items, housing authority collaboration, and the city manager search. The meeting included public comment on noise ordinance enforcement, approval of numerous routine contracts and grants, new board appointments, and a contentious discussion on public parking at McCown Towers.
I'd like to welcome you to the January 5th regular city commission meeting, and I am calling it to order. Uh first we will have the invocation by city auditor and clerk grooks. Please thank you. Heavenly Father, we affirm our faith in thee. We seek your divine strength, wisdom, and guidance in the deliberations that affect the lives of each of the citizens of our community. In the name we pray, Amen. And Vice Mayor, will you lead us in the pledge? Thank you. And we are going to have a moment of silence in memory of a city neighborhood activist Barbara Powell Harris, who recently passed away. Thank you. Thank you very much. And to begin our agenda, are there any changes to the order of the day? No, Madam Mayor, there are no changes to the order of the day. Thank you. May I have a motion to accept the agenda as published? So moved. Seven. Moved by Commissioner Batti, seconded by the Vice Mayor. Have your vote, please. And it passed unanimously. Thank you very much. Turning the page. No problem, Mayor. Thank you. We may disagree, but we will be respectful to one another. We will direct all comments to issues. We will not engage in personal attacks. Thank you. And we have four individuals who have requested to speak at this stage of the agenda on items that are not on today's agenda. If you will all come and join us at the table. I want to thank all the staff too, especially the special events where we where it all starts with James and Laurie and John and getting our permits and everything and our application so we can do this. The police, I mean, it's all hands-on deck that night, like I'm sure it is on New Year's Eve. And Sergeant Luciano, it was his first time kind of uh in control of that, and uh Lieutenant Quinlan was there, and then of course they brought in Lieutenant Schweederman, and then of course Lisa helped us get our FDOT permit so we could close down uh 301 so we could go across the road. So, and then uh Mr. Willie Butler and crew, the public works. So I tell you what, we couldn't do it without them and just what they do, and and uh he was instrumental in and getting doing a little special something for me, which uh didn't take too much time. Our parks and rec who make sure that we get the trees pruned so the the floats don't hit any tree limbs, and uh so and then I want to I I want to thank my board. I've got some new board members on uh the board uh this year, and it really worked well for me. Uh my first two years, I felt like I was doing it myself. But uh this was actually my ninth year. It would have been the 10th uh had we had COVID, and we're getting ready to do our 30th uh this year, which would have been last year, but with COVID, we didn't have one. So we're looking forward to our 30th year. We're gonna be working on the the uh what's going to be the theme, you know. It's there's the 30th year, which is the Pearl Year, my tenth year, which is diamonds. Uh we've got our 250th year of the uh of the United States. Um there's all kinds of celebrations happening this year, and we want to make it special. Uh I couldn't do it without our volunteers, and believe it or not, the night of we have right out about 10 volunteers, not including myself, but uh unpaid uh that puts that together and makes it go down Main Street. And um then uh we had some sponsorships this year. We've been kind of struggling because when I took it over, my insurance was $400 for the day that I have to get. Uh this last year I cut a check for $7400.