Issue link: https://newsleader.uberflip.com/i/119978
HARNESSING A POT OF GOLD Downtown Sarasota has benefited from the expenditure of CRA funds. Photo by Norman Schimmel ANALYSIS: FOR THE CRA, THE FUTURE WILL BE HERE BEFORE YOU KNOW IT By Stan Zimmerman City Editor Combine a lame-duck city commissioner with a pot-of-gold tax scheme, failing budgets, unmet capital needs and a county unsure of the direction of its future and you get … an 11-member committee. trepreneur and budget wizard, there is no one — either a sitting commissioner or candidate, city or county — who can take his place. Pot of gold? Could you stand $3.5 million in your pocket every year, no strings attached? It Let us take 'em one at a time. is called a "Community Redevelopment Agency," a complicated Lame duck? City Comproperty tax scheme missioner Terry TurnWe have over-invested in downtown to attack "slum-ander announced months blight." But the pot o' ago he was not inter- — to good effect — but it's time to stop gold for the city disested in a second term. because there are so many other areas in appears in 2016. Then And he will be missed the city that need attention. what? greatly for his financial Terry Turner Commissioner acumen. A former ecoFailing budgets? SaraCity of Sarasota nomics professor, ensota — city and coun-