Sarasota News Leader
June 7, 2013
Commissioner Christine Robinson said, "I'm
not 100 percent positive that the City of North
Port will guide this asset where it needs to
go."
She pointed out that Reid just moments earlier had informed the County Commission of
the University of Miami's interest in selling
Little Salt Spring to the county. Also located
in North Port, the site is an underwater archaeological and ecological preserve; it "has
produced the second-oldest dated artifact
ever found in the southeast United States —
a sharpened wooden stake some 12,000 years
old," according to the website of the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine &
Atmospheric Science.
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Mineral Springs, "and create in North Port an
educational, environmental, archaeological
and, in the case of Warm Mineral Springs, a
tourist destination for the future of the city
and the county."
Commissioner Nora Patterson interjected, "I
think in the end we all want the same thing,
but the path looks pretty twisted and difficult
to follow …"
Patterson added that when the boards bought
Warm Mineral Springs, county commissioners had concerns about damage to the property that could result from overdevelopment.
"Now the roles seem to be totally reversed
and the majority of the North Port City Commission seems to want no economic develop"We've got to make sure that we keep these in ment on-site, and somehow there seems to be
local, public ownership," Commissioner Rob- a suspicion that we want to overdevelop it. I
inson added of Little Salt Spring and Warm think this is truly ironic."
Click to watch
the video
The video clip above is from the North Port Commission's May 28 meeting.
