Issue link: https://newsleader.uberflip.com/i/235968
Sarasota News Leader January 3, 2014 showing up, doing the minimum and collecting their check," Barbetta says. "We need to reward those that are working hard to be 4s and 5s." Commissioner Christine Robinson casts the "No," vote, as she did last year when County Administrator Randall Reid proposed a $1,000 lump sum payment to nonunion employees. "This is hard," Robinson said, "because the people I work with — it directly impacts them. But I can't, as long as we're deficit spending, take on more deficit spending …" It has taken him a few months, but Sarasota County Commissioner Joe Barbetta finally wins support from his fellow board members for upgrading the county's BMX facility on 17th Street. Although Barbetta's motion is pegged to the county's Parks and Recreation Department supplying documentation of project details and estimates, his motion passes on a unanimous vote. It comes after more people appear before the County Commission during the public comments portion of its regular meeting on Aug. 27 to plead for the addition of a 5-meter ramp and the reconfiguration of the track to make the BMX facility the only one of its type available on the U.S. East Coast — and only the second one in the nation. The other facility, in Chula Vista, CA, is in demand by athletes from all over the world for training purposes, the commissioners heard in public comments at their Aug. 20 budget workshop. Page 83 Pass, as the area marks the 30th anniversary of the inlet's closing. Jim Herbert was among a delegation of Sarasota County residents who met on Aug. 21 with officials of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) to discuss whether the county was treated unfairly in its last attempt to gain state and federal approval to allow water once again to flow through Midnight Pass from Little Sarasota Bay to the Gulf of Mexico. "We feel Sarasota County's permit application was improperly handled [in 2008]," Herbert tells The Sarasota News Leader on Aug. 26. The Aug. 21 meeting was an opportunity to make the case for DEP's reconsideration of the issue, he adds. Although it will be up to the Sarasota County Commission to pursue the endeavor, state officials have indicated they are "open to scheduling a formal pre-application meeting during which specific elements of a proposed project would be carefully vetted," Sarasota County Coastal Resources Manager Laird Wreford wrote County Administrator Randall Reid in an email on Aug. 22 that summed up the meeting. After about nine months of more intensive staff time and discussions among the Sarasota County Commission, the Sarasota City Commission and the Manatee County Commission, the Sarasota County board votes 4-1 on Aug. 27 to withdraw its application for federal support for a bus rapid transit (BRT) system to serve the community. The board was facing a September deadline to decide on proceeding with its 2010 applicaThe chairman of the Midnight Pass Society tion for federal support for a BRT system says he is "cautiously optimistic" about along the CSX railroad corridor or choosing renewing an effort this year to open Midnight to withdraw it and pursue a new application