Weekly Newsletter

Friday, Feb. 6, 2026

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We’re here to keep you informed on the local issues that matter most. Each week, we share our latest in-depth reporting, along with the most important stories from around the region, so you stay connected and up to date with what’s happening in your community.

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NEW FROM SUNCOAST SEARCHLIGHT:

A BOLD AFFORDABLE HOUSING PLAN SPUTTERED. NOW SARASOTA IS TRYING AGAIN

Nearly two years ago, Sarasota’s then-City Manager Marlon Brown had an ambitious idea to purchase downtown property near City Hall and turn it into large-scale affordable housing.

In an effort that would become the first-of-its-kind across Florida, Brown secured millions of dollars in pledges from the area’s largest philanthropic foundations and millions more earmarked from the Florida Legislature. 

The blueprint promised to tackle one of downtown Sarasota’s most pressing problems — a lack of affordable housing in the urban core that has long become a playground for the wealthy.

With the support of city commissioners, Brown’s plan would see the city take direct control over the development, own the property and supply nearly 200 units of attainable housing in two high-rise buildings on First Street, with a groundbreaking anticipated in mid-2025.

It was uncharted territory in Sarasota. Development of affordable housing is typically done on less expensive land facilitated with complicated financing that often requires tax credits. Instead of high-rise development, these projects are typically not more than three or four stories — an exception being Lofts on Lemon, which is five stories — and involve partnerships with developers that have decades of experience in the highly regulated industry. 

Even then, deals can take years to go from plans on paper to shovels in the ground. What Brown proposed would speed up the timeline, deliver more units and keep the city in full control along the way.

Sarasota spent more than $7 million on two parcels in September 2024.

A month later, Brown resigned. The anticipated groundbreaking never happened. Promised foundation dollars never materialized. And the project seemingly languished as Sarasota cycled through two interim city managers.

But it is now stirring again.

NEW FROM SUNCOAST SEARCHLIGHT:

SUNCOAST SEARCHLIGHT WINS FLORIDA PRESS CLUB HONORS

Journalists at Suncoast Searchlight were honored with six awards from the Florida Press Club for education, business, environmental coverage and in-depth reporting.

The statewide awards were presented Saturday evening during a ceremony in West Palm Beach. They are the first media honors for Suncoast Searchlight since the nonprofit newsroom’s official launch in February 2025. The awards honored work produced in Florida and published between June 1, 2024 and May 31, 2025.

Suncoast Searchlight investigative reporter Alice Herman took first place in the Class B education category for stories that focused on New College of Florida, including an article about a Chinese professor fired under a controversial state law that limits public universities from employing people from so-called “countries of concern.”

Investigative Editor Josh Salman and former data reporter Kara Newhouse also won first place in the Class B business journalism category for their stories on Florida’s greenbelt law.

The series revealed how the state loophole is costing Sarasota and Manatee counties millions in lost revenue by allowing developers to tap a decades-old law meant to preserve agriculture and shrink the taxes on pastures they intend to pave over.

“I’m incredibly proud of the work produced by our team,” said Emily Le Coz, Suncoast Searchlight’s executive editor-in-chief. “What makes these honors especially meaningful is that all of this work was done within our first few months of publishing. It reinforces why we launched Suncoast Searchlight — to deliver ambitious, deeply-reported journalism on the issues shaping people’s lives across our region.”

Suncoast Searchlight also was awarded second and third-place honors in the annual competition for work on environmental coverage, general news, in-depth reporting and public service journalism.

What do you trust when information is coming from everywhere? And how do you decide what’s missing, misleading or manipulated?

Join us for a conversation about evaluating information, understanding how misinformation spreads — and why curiosity, context and accountability matter.

Thursday, Feb. 19

5:30–7 pm

Selby Library, 1331 1st St, Sarasota (Jack J. Geldbart Auditorium)

Seats limited, save yours today

Presented as part of the Searchlight Series with Gulf Coast Community Foundation

HERE'S WHAT ELSE WE RECOMMEND READING THIS WEEK

CAMPAIGN RECORDS REQUEST FUELS FDLE PROBE INTO FORMER SARASOTA TAX COLLECTOR'S PAY PRACTICES

FROM FLORIDA TRIDENT

What began as a campaign-season public records request has escalated into a forensic audit and an active state criminal investigation inside one of Sarasota County’s constitutional offices. A forensic audit by the Guidehouse consulting firm commissioned after Mike Moran won the November 2024 election alleges that 13 employees in the Sarasota County Tax Collector’s Office received “extra compensation” totaling $461,753 between fiscal years 2021 and 2023. The report says the compensation was delivered through payroll adjustments, credited hours, and benefits-related offsets, and that key documentation was missing — including records showing approval by Moran’s predecessor, Barbara Ford-Coates, who served as tax collector for more than 40 years.

READ THE STORY HERE

WILDLIFE RESCUE CENTERS REPORT GOOD, BAD WINTER CHILL IMPACTS

FROM THE DAILY SUN

Southwest Florida has experienced an uncharacteristically long cold spell, with temperatures as low as the 30s and a number of freeze warnings. As the temperature continues to stay chilly, Floridians are turning up the heat in their homes for probably the first time in a while.Many of Florida’s furry residents can’t, and it’s creating a menagerie of issues, including mange, cold stuns and migrating manatees. Local experts are asking the public to stay alert and be educated on how to help. Animals that are already “somewhat compromised” are struggling most.

READ THE STORY HERE

'WE DON'T GO TO HOME DEPOT': A VENEZUELAN COUPLE'S IMMIGRATION JOURNEY THROUGH A YEAR OF ENFORCEMENT

FROM WLRN PUBLIC MEDIA VIA WUSF

Their immigration lawyer rarely calls Sean and Michelle. So when Michelle saw the phone number come up on her cellphone last year, she answered. She learned that she was one of 65,000 people who had been granted a H-1B visa. It meant a little more clarity for her and her husband's long immigration odyssey toward, they hope, becoming U.S. citizens. The couple has been in the U.S. for more than a decade. They got married. Sean started a business. They have a daughter who was born in the U.S. However, their immigration journey to legally stay in the country has included an asylum claim, different visas and eventually obtaining Temporary Protected Status, or TPS.

READ THE STORY HERE

MANATEE AGREES TO BISHOP ANIMAL SHELTER CONSULTATION AFTER EXPANSION BACKLASH

FROM BRADENTON HERALD

After taking heat from animal advocates in recent weeks, Manatee County commissioners voted to have an outside organization review changes at Bishop Animal Shelter. The board’s decision to have the University of Florida’s Shelter Medicine Program do a consultation on Bishop comes after several Manatee County animal activists criticized the shelter’s expansion, arguing that they have concerns with the kennels’ durability, impact on animal welfare and other struggles they believe staff and volunteers will face.

READ THE STORY HERE

IN TAMPA BAY, A PROPOSED CRUISE PORT REIGNITES AN OLD FLORIDA BATTLE

FROM TAMPA BAY TIMES

Since SSA Marine first publicized its idea to to build a multiberth cruise port two weeks ago, it has become the latest symbol of a quintessential tension in this rapidly developing state: The promise of jobs and more tourism money is colliding with fears over the environmental degradation that could come at the expense of growth. Manatee County is already on the front lines. About 3,000 acres of wetlands have disappeared in the county over roughly the last decade, a Tampa Bay Times analysis of land use data shows. Manatee ranks fifth among Florida counties for the share of wetlands lost during that period.

READ THE STORY HERE

MANATEE COUNTY OFFICIALS REPORT THREATS OVER PROPOSED CRUISE TERMINAL

FROM ABC7

Manatee County officials say they are receiving threatening messages and harassment related to a proposed cruise terminal, with some staff members’ children being targeted at school. Courtney De Pol, the Deputy County Administrator, said county officials want to hear from the community about the proposed cruise port near the Terra Ceia area, but some people are crossing the line. “We appreciate all of the input that we have received and our county commissioners are taking them very seriously and they are reading each and every one,” De Pol said. “That being said we are noticing that the public comment that we are receiving are becoming more aggressive.”

READ/WATCH THE STORY HERE

WHAT DID USF KNOW ABOUT NEW COLLEGE CAMPUS TAKEOVER? EMAILS SHOW KEY INVOLVEMENT

FROM BRADENTON HERALD

When University of South Florida officials broke ground on new Sarasota-Manatee campus facilities, they knew New College of Florida could soon take possession, according to emails reviewed by the Bradenton Herald. Records show USF officials have been working on a plan for the liberal arts school to take the university’s Sarasota-Manatee campus since early 2025. Gov. Ron DeSantis included an identical proposal in the state 2026-2027 budget that would force USF to transfer the facilities at its Sarasota-Manatee campus to New College. But according to records obtained by the Bradenton Herald and a statement from USF, the Florida Board of Governors asked USF and New College to look into “synergies” in 2024.

READ THE STORY HERE

EX-NEW COLLEGE STRATEGIST SAYS THE TRANSFER OF USF DORM DEBT 'WILL KILL THE COLLEGE'

FROM WUSF

A former top strategist at New College of Florida called Gov. Ron DeSantis’ proposal to transfer 32 acres of land and buildings — along with $53 million in debt — from the University of South Florida’s Sarasota-Manatee campus to New College “lethal,” warning it would drown the small liberal arts college in insurmountable debt. The end result, said Nathan Allen, who resigned from New College in 2024, would be the closure of both college campuses and the state selling off their respective properties along Sarasota’s bayfront to pay the debt. “How do you assume $50 million in debt against no revenue?” Allen said. “In the business world, if you were a CEO, you would be sued by your shareholders out of existence. Like, that's nuts. And yet, that's what's happening.”

READ THE STORY HERE

MR. GRUTERS GOES TO WASHINGTON

BY SARASOTA MAGAZINE

Joe Gruters is a nice guy. Almost everyone will tell you so. A political operative for nearly three decades, the 48-year-old, Sarasota-born Gruters is a fixture in Sarasota and Florida politics. He’s been a member of the Florida House of representatives, Florida state senator (a position he still holds), MAGA warrior, Sarasota’s Republican Party chair, Republican Party of Florida (RPOF) chair and Florida co-chair (alongside Susie Wiles, now White House Chief of Staff) of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. But ask locals and state politicos, and he’s just as famous for his affable nature, avoiding name-calling and public vendettas despite being inseparable from the toxic stew of Washington.

READ THE STORY HERE

SARASOTA COUNTY COMMUNITY VOTES DOWN IRRIGATION SETTLEMENT PLAN

FROM SARASOTA HERALD-TRIBUNE

A majority of Gran Paradiso property owners in south Sarasota County voted against a plan to settle legal fees in the irrigation lawsuit with the West Villages Improvement District by giving the special district a 1.43-acre parcel of land. By an overwhelming margin of 1,087 to 407, members of the Gran Paradiso Property Owners Association rejected the land transfer proposal, Monday afternoon. “The land will not be transferred; the community has spoken,” Gran Paradiso Property Owners Association President Bill Kelly told the Herald-Tribune, Tuesday morning.

READ THE STORY HERE

DID YOU MISS OUR PREVIOUS NEWSLETTER?

HERE'S WHAT WE SHARED:

FLORIDA RESIDENTS USE FDLE TIP LINE TO REPORT NEIGHBORS, ACQUAINTANCES

In the first months after the Florida Department of Law Enforcement set up a tip line for people to report agencies for not complying with the state’s immigration laws, only a trickle of responses flowed in — and many of them focused less on police than on the people next door.

The “Law Enforcement Accountability Dashboard” asks tipsters to identify non-compliant law enforcement agencies, but records obtained by Suncoast Searchlight show many submissions hinge on allegations about neighbors and community members suspected of being undocumented. Often embedded in those complaints are accusations that local agencies are not doing enough about it. 

One informant complained about his son’s bus driver being “foreign.” Three tipsters seemingly focused on individuals with whom they had personal quarrels. Two others complained of loud parties. 

“These Haitian residents throw extremely loud parties 2 to 3 nights per week,” wrote a Lake Worth Beach resident. “The primary resident may be here legally, but we feel their party goers may not be.”

The tool was created in March to “provide a direct channel for officers and employees to report any failure by their agency to comply with Florida’s immigration enforcement policies” — though the portal also welcomes tips from the public.



A DOWNTOWN SARASOTA CONDO PROMISED HOUSING. THEN IT WAS MARKETED LIKE A HOTEL

For more than a year, a proposed 18-story, glass-and-concrete tower in Sarasota moved through the city’s review process as a residential development that would bring nearly 300 condo units to a modest lot downtown. That’s four times more than city codes would normally allow. 

In exchange for the extra density, the developers promised 40 of those units would be below market-rate. It was a trade-off that city officials and early supporters of the project believed would add much-needed, affordable housing to the city’s urban core.

Then the marketing materials appeared.

Billing itself as “the first new luxury high-rise residences in downtown Sarasota with three-day minimum rental freedom,” Saravela promotes an onsite rental program to help owners offer their units for short-term stays — a detail that had not been disclosed to city officials during the project’s review.

For some, that came as a shock.

“Never in our wildest imagination did we think that the Saravela would be turned into some sort of hotel or Airbnb factory, which will add materially to the traffic in that part of Sarasota,” downtown resident Peter Blanton wrote to a city commissioner in early December.

Blanton is among the small group of residents who had publicly supported the project but are now raising concerns, saying they feel blindsided and want the city to intervene.

City officials say the three-day rental model promoted by Saravele would violate Sarasota’s regulations for short-term rentals, which requires minimum stays of seven days for residential properties and bars short-term rentals from qualifying for bonus density.

AFTER SARASOTA SCHOOLS' ICE VOTE, QUESTIONS REMAIN ABOUT ENFORCEMENT ON CAMPUSES

Throngs of students, parents and community members crowded around the School Board of Sarasota County building on Tuesday morning, forming a line so long that many could not get a seat in the meeting happening inside. 

More than 100 people signed up to speak, while hundreds more protested outside, carrying signs denouncing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Sarasota School Board Chair Bridget Ziegler, who proposed a resolution calling for full cooperation with the federal agency inside public schools. 

Despite the outcry, board members voted 3 to 2 to pass the measure, committing to “full cooperation and collaboration” with ICE and stating that the school board will not raise “additional barriers, policies or directives” that could “hinder or delay lawful law enforcement actions on school property.” 

Speakers overwhelmingly decried the resolution and shared fears of scenes from places like Minneapolis – of masked agents breaking into cars and homes – taking place in the Sarasota public schools. 

The tension surrounding the nearly 7-hour school board meeting highlights how the national immigration crackdown has sowed mistrust between local communities and federal law enforcement – even in a deep red county like Sarasota. It also introduced thorny legal questions about the role of public schools in maintaining a safe learning environment while collaborating with federal police who have ramped up deportation efforts this year.

As it stands, the school district’s current protocols for handling possible visits from ICE – or local law enforcement with immigration enforcement powers – are unclear.

CURIOSITY IN CHAOS: HOW LOCAL NONPROFIT TAKES ON HOSTILE POLITICAL DIVISION

Don’t say the word “debate” around Bill Woodson.

He’ll politely clarify that a debate implies two sides disagreeing. At Woodson’s Sarasota-based nonprofit, Conversations Across the Aisle (CATA), there aren’t any winners or losers –– just a group of people from varying ends of the political spectrum trying to understand one another.

“People who are curious are not the mainstream,” Woodson said. “If we gave value and valence to getting both sides of an argument, I think it would lead to better policies and better quality of life for everybody.”

Woodson founded CATA about three years ago as a deeply personal response to a question that has come to define modern political life: What happens when people stop listening to one another? 

Through a series of facilitated dinners, CATA seeks to “rehumanize” people on all sides of the political spectrum, bringing together those with different political beliefs not to debate or persuade, but to sit at the same table, share a meal and try to understand how a reasonable person could see the world so differently.

The first such dinner took place in October 2023, and the organization has held six more since then — one each quarter, tackling topics like “the evolving relationship between church and state,” “the war on woke” and “what is due process; is it a universal right?”

'OUR RESPONSIBILITY.' MANATEE SUPERINTENDENT USHERS CHANGE AFTER MISCONDUCT INVESTIGATION

The Manatee County School District has implemented new teacher training and reinforced hiring practices following a Suncoast Searchlight and Bradenton Herald investigation into staff misconduct toward students.

At least a dozen incidents during the past two years have sparked arrests, costly lawsuits and outcry from parents who contend the administration did not do enough to protect students. The newsrooms’ joint investigation found the district overlooked potential red flags in job applications, either missed or ignored early warnings of inappropriate behavior and, in recent years, skipped Title IX training for proper sexual harassment reporting. 

The day before the investigation was published in December, district staff sent a mass alert to parents across the county emphasizing its work to make students safer. Once the story was published, district leaders then circulated the article to top brass in the school system, emphasizing the priority on fixes. 

During a follow-up interview with reporters in January, Superintendent Laurie Breslin said that while many of the cases outlined in the investigation occurred before she took the helm in September, she acknowledged that more could be done and vowed “immediate improvement.”

“We took a closer look after the article, and we implemented training in January required for all school and district leadership,” Breslin said. “Any time that we see anything in the press that shows a need for reflection and or a need for improvement, it’s our responsibility to take a look at that and have an important conversation on what we can do as an organization to do better.”



'FROM TIP TO TRUTH' DRAWS CROWD FOR INSIDE LOOK AT INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING

How do you decide if a lead is worth chasing?

What special tools or resources do you use when investigating stories?

Can you share a time you got blowback for your reporting and what you did about it?

Suncoast Searchlight journalists answered these and other questions during a one-hour event designed to take readers inside the reporting process, explain how investigative decisions are made and create space for open conversation between journalists and the communities they serve. 

“From Tip to Truth: How Investigative Reporting Takes Shape” was the third in Suncoast Searchlight’s ongoing series of community engagement events sponsored by Gulf Coast Community Foundation. The series is built around the idea that accountability journalism is better understood — and trusted — when reporters are visible and transparent about their work. 

The event, held at Manatee Community Foundation in Bradenton, drew a crowd of about 40 people. Attendees heard from journalists Josh Salman and Alice Herman, who shared examples from their reporting and walked through how stories evolve.

“I think about the stakes and I think about whether the story will be useful to people,” said Herman, an investigative/watchdog reporter in response to the question about deciding whether a lead is worth chasing.

Not all leads or tips pan out, she said. Journalists must evaluate whether a claim can be proved through records, interviews, data or other reporting and whether pursuing it would result in an impactful or meaningful story. 

GOT A TIP OR STORY IDEA?

Share your tips and story ideas using our online form. Your name and contact info will be kept confidential.

Suncoast Searchlight is a 501c3 nonprofit news organization whose mission is to produce investigative and explanatory journalism that serves and empowers the residents of Florida’s Suncoast region (Sarasota, Manatee, and DeSoto counties). We shine a light on critical issues affecting our community. Through independent reporting and collaboration with diverse media partners, we foster transparency, accountability and an informed citizenry, ensuring that all voices are heard and that the public has access to the information they need to drive meaningful change.

CONTACT US:

Suncoast Searchlight

PO Box 99 Sarasota, FL 34230

(941) 724-4450