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Page 2 Operations report

• A vendor was hired to stock warehouses and vehicles in each facilities zone with parts. The ready availability of parts eliminates shopping and reduces travel time for maintenance staff.
• Maintenance staff has increased its completed work order rate from 14,830 in the first six months of 2006-07 to 19,217 in the first six month of 2007-08, nearly a 30 percent increase.
• Over the past three years, the district has reduced the overall custodial budget by nearly $3 million while building five new schools with 625,000 square feet of new floor space. The cleanliness of schools has improved and customer-satisfaction levels have been maintained.
• Sarasota custodians clean an average of 30,000 square feet per person per shift, about 37 percent higher than the industry standard.

• The custodial staff is using improved cleaning products and techniques, including micro-fiber materials that eliminate the need for mops, sponges and buckets that can transfer contaminants.
• State-of-the-art power cleaning equipment enables custodians to clean and disinfect a typical school bathroom in about seven minutes.

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Page 3 Operations Report

In addition to the savings represented by the examples above, the Operations Division is investing in long-term efficiencies with a number of environmentally friendly initiatives. The new middle school and elementary school in North Port are being built to the specifications of the U.S. Green Building Council for certification under the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program.

The division also is using only environmentally friendly cleaning products and has developed a catalogue of low-maintenance, Florida friendly plants for use in all future district landscaping projects.

The district also is piloting the state’s concurrency program that will require residential developers to pay the costs of the impact of new development on schools in advance of construction.

These initiatives are particularly important in the current challenging economic environment, but COO Lempe said they would have been pursued regardless of the health of the economy.

"We never lose sight of the fact that the entire purpose of the Operations Division is to support teaching and learning," Lempe said. "Efficiency and productivity are crucial to our mission because every dollar we save is a dollar that can go back into the classroom."

-SCS-

We are admonished of Sarasota’s failed effort to slow growth in the 1960’s by not building infrastructure. Growth occurred anyway and the County was forced to retrofit excessively expensive infrastructure.

If growth is inevitable, does that mean that growth never stops? Sarasota has 367,000 acres of land and if we built to the same densities as New York City or Tokyo, we could presumably accommodate millions of people. While many of us would consider this scenario ridiculous (some may not) I use it to suggest there will be a point where the population of Sarasota County stabilizes. The question is when and how that stabilization will occur.

The concept of inevitable growth has always bothered me. Many communities have had no population growth for years, even decades, and some have even declined. Why doesn’t this rule apply to them?

Populations grow because people choose to live in a community that offers the best quality of life that they can afford. This means growth is inevitable only as long as an area remains attractive. For Sarasota, weather alone will allow us to remain attractive long enough to lose the charm and character that endears this special place to many of us. For this reason growth management and long-range community planning become critical decisions. While Sarasota may be experiencing a no population growth during this economic recession, most experts agree that a, a growth trend is sure to return.

For most counties, build-out isn’t deliberately planned, but results from a series of incremental and isolated decisions. Development approvals overstress infrastructure such as roads, parks, schools and jails. When more infrastructure is built, more development is approved that again overcrowds the infrastructure. This mindless cycle repeats itself until all available land is developed and open space amenities are lost.

As bizarre as it seems, this is a standard planning model for many Florida counties. Pinellas, Broward and Miami-Dade are classic examples. Rather than planning what their future community could look like and determining what facilities would need to be built and what resources should be preserved, they develop by default. Thousands of uncoordinated development decisions are made with no regard to a long-term coordinated plan. Certainly conditions change, and plans will need to be changed, but revising a destination plan is a much better option than making chaotic decisions with no destination in mind.

Sarasota County is at a critical point. We can follow the default planning model of over-developed counties, or we can determine what amenities, assets and characters are worth protecting, and adopt a plan that preserves them. Rather than competing with other counties or cities to see who can become the next Orlando, Sarasota should strive to become an exemplary mid-sized county that recognizes open space, agriculture and environmentally sensitive areas as permanent uses, rather than lands in a holding pattern for mindless "inevitable growth" yet to come.

Creating a sustainable Sarasota means focusing more on promoting economic, capital, social and spiritual growth than on population growth. Many communities with stable populations develop these assets and amenities and provide a high quality, attractive living environment for their citizens.

A community that deliberately plans to preserve its unique character will prosper economically and distinguish itself from other areas that accept the defeatist slogan of "inevitable growth" at any cost, and over-develop themselves into oblivion.

The 1960’s effort to slow growth didn’t fail simply because they did not build infrastructure. It failed because they not only didn’t build infrastructure, they approved the development. This makes about as much sense as buying a fish but not an aquarium.

Sarasota’s existing Comprehensive Plans have enough growth approved today to double the County’s existing population. Considering the difficulty in financing the infrastructure needed to accommodate the first 350,000 people, it would be foolhardy to add more now, before we solve the problems of the past. It is by NOT adding additional development capacity to these existing Plans that we are most likely to assure that Sarasota County doesn’t become an accomplice in the same botched planning exercise that created Florida’s lower East Coast. Instead we have an opportunity to offer the community a chance to avoid wall-to-wall suburbanization.