The Squeeze

1 / 30 · Start here

You work in Sarasota County. This is what your county government has been doing with your money — and what it's about to cost you.

You already know the feeling: rent went up, insurance went up, the grocery bill went up, and the paycheck didn't keep pace. This deck is about the one bill you probably haven't looked at closely — the one from the county — and why it is about to get bigger.

Thirty slides. Every number comes from the county's own audited reports, its own budget plan, or a named public source, and every one is footnoted. Use the arrow keys or the buttons below to move through it.

2 / 30 · Where your county has been

Two lines. One is the number of people. The other is the money.

If the county had simply grown with the people who moved here, the two lines would sit on top of each other. Instead, population rose 24% while spending plus debt rose 99%. The dashed line marks FY2023, when the gap started to open fast.^[1]

3 / 30 · Where your county has been

Per person, the county now carries $5,022 in spending and debt — up 60% in ten years.

This is not the tax bill you receive — it is the county's footprint divided by everyone who lives here. It is the amount that has to come from somewhere, eventually, and there are only so many somewheres.^[1]

4 / 30 · Where your county has been

County debt doubled: $620M to $1.23B. Almost a quarter of it was borrowed in a single year.

Debt is the part of the story that matters most to a working household, because debt is a promise to collect from you later. A bond issued in 2025 is repaid by whoever is paying water bills and property taxes in 2045.^[1]

5 / 30 · Who lives here, and what they earn

Who actually lives here? Not who the brochures show.

The median Sarasota household earns $78,218 a year. Half of all households earn less than that. The people who cook the food, clean the rooms, staff the hospitals, teach the kids, and build the houses are mostly in that half.^[3]

The top household on this slide earns 4.2 times the bottom one. Keep those three numbers in mind; the rest of the deck is about which of them the county's choices land on.

6 / 30 · Who lives here, and what they earn

In ten years the top fifth gained $55,758. The bottom fifth gained $14,283.

The dollar gap between a well-off household and a struggling one widened from $74,713 to $116,188. The percentages look similar — that is the trick of percentages. In dollars, which is what rent and groceries are priced in, the top pulled away by nearly four to one.^[3]

7 / 30 · Who lives here, and what they earn

What the jobs here actually pay.

These are real published wages for this metro — federal wage data by occupation, plus the starting salaries the county, the school district, and the sheriff post themselves. Nurses and teachers are highlighted because the next slides follow them home.^[4][20][21]

8 / 30 · What it costs to live here

To afford a modest two-bedroom here, a household needs $84,760 a year. Most of these jobs don't get there.

A two-bedroom at $2,119 a month is not a luxury unit; it is the modest figure this site uses everywhere. Even HUD's official fair-market rent, $1,958, requires $78,320 a year. A single teacher, nurse assistant, firefighter, or store manager is not there. A single nurse barely is.^[7]

9 / 30 · What it costs to live here

Buying? The median house sold for $492,450 in June. The mortgage alone is $2,851 a month.

The standard lender test is that housing should not exceed 28% of gross income. At $3,953 a month, that requires a household income of about $169,414 — more than a nurse and a teacher earn together.^[5][6][8][9]

10 / 30 · What it costs to live here

The nurse and the teacher: $142,850 a year, two kids, the median house — and the essentials alone eat the entire paycheck.

11 / 30 · What it costs to live here

The single parent: the essentials cost $4,929 a month. The paycheck is $3,114.

12 / 30 · What it costs to live here

The store manager: a salaried job, a one-bedroom, and $821 a month for everything else.

13 / 30 · What it costs to live here

The retired couple: fixed income, paid-off house, and a bill stack that only moves one direction.

14 / 30 · What it costs to live here

The common thread: there is no cushion. So every new charge lands on something real.

Two of these four households are already in the red on essentials alone. For the store manager, with $821 of slack, a $6-a-month utility increase is 0.8% of everything he had left — and it is only the first of several scheduled.

The food bank now serves 85,000-90,000 people in this county, up 20% in a year. Those are not strangers. On the numbers above, they are the single parent on slide 11 and, one car repair later, the family on slide 10.^[23]

15 / 30 · What the county did

While households ran out of slack, the county's own footprint went from $1.23B to $2.45B.

Audited actuals, not budgets — this is what was actually spent and actually owed at each year-end. The rise was gradual until FY2022 and then steep. Nothing about the county's population, geography, or service list changed at that speed.^[1]

16 / 30 · What the county did

The county budget works out to $5,177 per resident this year — $20,708 for a family of four.

Not every dollar is paid directly by residents — tourists pay some, grants cover some — but the budget is the size of the claim the county makes on the local economy. And starting next year, $224 of each resident's share does not buy a single service. It pays for money already spent.^[2][16]

17 / 30 · What the county did

In FY2027, $109M goes out the door before one deputy, one librarian, or one road is paid for.

Debt service is the least flexible line in any budget. It cannot be cut in a bad year; it has first claim. When revenues fall short, everything else gets squeezed — or rates and taxes go up. That is why the debt chart on slide 4 is the one to remember.^[2]

And the county's bonds are not short-term. The largest lien runs to 2055. Total principal on the nine liens is $1.03B, with peak annual payments of $88M.^[24]

18 / 30 · What hasn't hit yet

Here is the part that matters most: almost none of this has reached your mailbox yet.

Government money moves in three steps — spend, borrow, collect — and there is a lag between each. Sarasota County has finished the first two. The third is scheduled, in writing, in the county's own plan.

1. Step 1 · FY2023 – FY2024

   Spend

   The net budget jumps 46.9% in one budget year. The decade's spending-and-debt growth reaches 99% against 24% population growth.

2. Step 2 · FY2024 – FY2026

   Borrow

   Outstanding debt reaches $1.23B for the county alone, $1.64B across the five local governments. FY2025 adds $224M in a single year.

3. Step 3 · FY2026 – FY2031

   Collect

   Water +6.4%. Wastewater +5% every year through 2028. Property-tax levy +3% in FY2027. Debt service hits $109M. Your turn.

19 / 30 · What hasn't hit yet

The increases already approved. Not proposed — approved.

• FPL electric base rates

  +$945M (2026) and +$705M (2027) statewide; ≈$6.9B cumulative through 2029

  Jan 2026 - 2029Approved by the Florida PSC, Nov 20, 2025

• County water rates

  +6.4%, plus a 2.23% inflation index factor

  Oct 1, 2025 (FY2026)Approved by the Board of County Commissioners

• County wastewater rates

  +5% per year, every year

  Through Oct 1, 2028Approved — funds the Advanced Wastewater Treatment conversion

• Peace River water-supply expansion

  ≈$337M county share, recovered through the rate base

  FY2026 onwardCommitted capital

• County ad valorem (property tax) levy

  +3.0% planned

  FY2027County's own preliminary financial plan

• County debt service

  $109.3M in FY2027 alone — cash that must be raised before a single service is delivered

  FY2027County's own preliminary financial plan

The water and wastewater increases are the county's own decisions, taken to fund capital the county chose to build. The FPL increase is the state's, but it lands on the same electric bill in the same month. A renter pays all of these — through the landlord, who passes on the property tax, and directly, on the utilities in their name.^[2][14]

20 / 30 · What hasn't hit yet

The county's own plan says where the money will come from. It is not a secret.

Property owners — and renters, who pay property tax inside their rent — supply 71 cents of every new dollar. Shoppers supply 14 through sales taxes. Developers, through impact and mobility fees, supply zero: the county projects those fees lower in FY2027 than they were in FY2018. Of the new debt, 72% is to be repaid by the sales surtax, 28% by property owners through the General Fund and assessments, and none by impact fees.^[17]

21 / 30 · Who gets the bill

Every one of those revenue streams takes a bigger bite from a smaller paycheck.

A sales tax, a utility rate, a stormwater fee, a gas tax: none of them ask what you earn. They are the same number of dollars for the store manager with $821 left over and the household with $10,000. That is why a county that funds itself this way is, in effect, choosing who pays for its growth.

22 / 30 · Who gets the bill

The one protected stream — property tax — protects whoever bought earliest. Not whoever earns least.

Florida's Save Our Homes amendment caps the taxable value of a homesteaded home at 3% growth a year. In a market where values rose 18%, 14%, and 10% in consecutive years, that shield is enormous — for the household that already owned. A new buyer starts at full value. A renter has no cap at all: the landlord's assessment grows up to 10% a year and lands in the lease.^[8]

23 / 30 · Who gets the bill

The county's second-largest revenue source is your water bill. It is going up every year through 2028.

A utility rate is the purest flat charge there is. A retired couple, a single CNA, and a surgeon who all use 4,000 gallons pay the same bill. The county chose to fund a $337M water-supply expansion and a wastewater conversion through the rate base — which means through that bill — and it has already scheduled the increases.^[14][24]

24 / 30 · The development irony

Here is the irony. The building boom everyone argues about is what kept 33,600 working families afloat.

The new subdivisions, the remodels, the roof replacements after the storms, the repairs, the hospital wings — that work is done by the people on slide 7. Construction is the one large sector in Sarasota where someone without a degree can earn a living wage.^[18]

So the honest position is not "stop building." Growth is not the problem. The question is who pays for the roads, water lines, parks, and fire stations that growth requires — the people who profit from building it, or the people who work on the crews and then go home to a rent they cannot afford.

25 / 30 · The development irony

Sarasota charges a new house about a third of what Manatee charges for the same roads, parks, and fire stations.

An impact fee is the one-time charge a new home pays for the public infrastructure it will use. Sarasota's is about $12,900. Manatee's is about $35,800; Collier's about $29,200. In 992 recorded Sarasota County roll-call votes, there is not one that raises the fee schedule. Every impact-fee vote spends the money; none asks for more of it.^[19]

26 / 30 · The development irony

Manatee charges nearly three times the fee. Its median house sells for $490,000. Sarasota's sells for $492,450. How?

Because the fee does not set the price. The buyer does. A house sells for what a buyer in that market will pay — and buyers in Manatee and Sarasota pay about the same. A $23,000 difference in fees is under 5% of the price and is absorbed in what the builder pays for the land and keeps as margin.^[6][19]

27 / 30 · The development irony

Put it together: the county poured gasoline on a fire that was already burning.

1. 1

   Housing, insurance, childcare, and groceries rose faster than working wages.

   Not the county's doing — but the county knew it. It is in its own economic reports.

2. 2

   The county doubled its debt and grew its footprint 99% against 24% population growth.

   Its choice, recorded in 992 roll-call votes.

3. 3

   It chose to fund that growth through the streams that hit working households hardest: property tax, water bills, sales tax.

   Its choice, written in its own five-year plan.

4. 4

   It left the one stream paid by developers untouched — at a third of the neighbor's rate.

   Its choice, by omission: no vote to raise it in the entire record.

5. 5

   And the bills for all of it are scheduled to arrive over the next five years.

   In the plan. On the calendar.

None of this required bad intentions. It only required a board that looked at a booming tax base and never asked which households the boom was leaving behind — and then reached for the revenue that was easiest to raise rather than the one that was fairest.^{[1][2][17][19]}

28 / 30 · What you can do

What this means for you, in one sentence each.

• If you rent

  Your rent already contains your landlord's property tax, and the county plans a 3% levy increase next year on top of assessments that rise up to 10% a year. Your water, sewer, and electric bills are all scheduled to rise.

• If you just bought

  You pay property tax at full value while your neighbor who bought in 2010 pays on a capped one — and you are the household the county's revenue plan leans on hardest.

• If you're a single parent working a $40,000 job

  The math does not close today. Every scheduled increase widens a gap you are already covering with a relative's couch, a second job, or the food bank.

• If you're retired on Social Security

  Save Our Homes protects your tax bill. Nothing protects your water, sewer, electric, or insurance bills, and all four are rising while your check is set in Washington.

• If you work construction

  Your industry is the one that kept working families in this county. The fee structure that supposedly protects it protects landowners and builders — not your paycheck, and not your rent.

29 / 30 · What you can do

None of this is inevitable. The same board that made these choices can make different ones.

Read the full platform at Solutions. Read every vote at The Record.

30 / 30 · What you can do

The people who run this county are elected. The next budget hearing is public. So is the next election.

Everything in this deck is drawn from documents the county publishes itself: its audited financial reports, its adopted budgets, its five-year plan, its debt profile, and its own roll-call record. The footnotes below link to each one. Check the numbers. Bring them to a meeting. Send this to a neighbor who is also wondering why the month keeps ending before the paycheck does.

A note on method: the four household budgets are arithmetic on published averages — federal wage data, HUD rents, KFF insurance surveys, USDA food plans, Florida insurance averages — not interviews with real families. Real households are messier in both directions. The county figures are audited actuals and the county's own adopted plans. Where we estimate, the footnote says so.