Issue link: https://newsleader.uberflip.com/i/115375
Sarasota News Leader March 15, 2013 Page 14 a discussion about its future space needs in already planning on how to use the money the city. Meanwhile, the old police station site after 2016, when the tax increment financing lies fallow, a reminder every day of the tactics scheme stops. of former County Administrator Jim Ley. The decade-old MOU also puts the city on the hook for $4 million "to participate in financing shared parking to support the expanded court facilities, the City's Payne Park and vicinity needs, providing up to 300 additional spaces but not to exceed $4,000,000." REVISITING THE ISSUE Only 10 years have elapsed since then-Mayor Lou Ann Palmer says she reluctantly signed the MOU. But most of the major players are gone from the stage. So when city and county staffers sat down on March 7 to look at the county's downtown space needs, there was The document provided a certain date to ter- no institutional memory at the table. minate the city's Community Redevelopment Agency and its tax-increment financing dis- County Administrator Randall Reid informed trict in 2016. The so-called TIF district has the county commissioners of the meeting by allowed the city to pour millions into improv- email. "The meeting confirmed the historic deing the downtown area. The county staff is sire to keep Sarasota government in the down- The new Sarasota Police Department is located on Adams Lane, near the courthouse complex in downtown Sarasota. Photo by Norman Schimmel