Four months after commissioners talked up a takeover of South Lido’s most troubled public space, city staff priced it out and said no. The county is now on its third try at slowing the jet skis.
—In May, the Sarasota City Commission sounded ready to take Ted Sperling Park off Sarasota County’s hands. Commissioner Jen Ahearn-Koch argued the city could run it better because it was right there. Residents who had spent years complaining about jet skis and party boats begged the commission to buy it. The city attorney offered to open talks.
—Then somebody ran the numbers.
—City staff have now told the county they will not take over the 150-acre park at the southern tip of Lido Key, or Nora Patterson Bay Island Park at the foot of the Siesta Drive bridge, and the reason is money. Taking on Ted Sperling would cost the city $663,921 up front and more than $1.7 million a year after that, according to a review by Parks and Recreation Director Jerry Fogle. The city, still digging out from the 2024 hurricanes and staring at a possible $5.6 million hit from Amendment 3, decided it could not afford a park the county itself had ranked as its worst.
—The memo that ended it
—Fogle’s conclusion was unambiguous.
“Based on the review, and in light of current budget constraints, staff are unable to recommend moving forward with assuming the operations,” he wrote. “While the concept may have merit, advancing it now will require significant financial and staffing resources that will put additional strain on the City’s budget that continues to recover from the financial impacts of recent storms.”
—The start-up figure covers what the city would need to buy before it could manage a beach and mangrove preserve it has never operated: personal watercraft for marine patrol, trucks and police vehicles. The recurring cost reflects staffing, maintenance and enforcement for a park that generates hundreds of police calls a year and sits where the Gulf, Big Sarasota Pass, Sarasota Bay and Brushy Bayou converge.
—The county’s own accounting of the episode, presented at the Sept. 18 joint meeting of the city and county commissions, is brief. The County Commission put the transfer of both parks into its 2026 Strategic Plan on Jan. 13. County staff researched deed restrictions, acquisition history, operating costs and revenues, and met with city staff early in the year. In March, the city sent the county a memo recommending against proceeding with either transfer “at that time.”
—That March memo predates the May 18 City Commission meeting at which the takeover idea was discussed as if it were still alive. Commissioners talked about local control, occupancy caps and shorter hours. Nobody mentioned that staff had already told the county no.
—Amendment 3 hangs over everything
—At the joint meeting, county parks director Shawn Yeager told both commissions the city had declined the initiative “for now,” and pointed to the fiscal uncertainty of Amendment 3 as part of the reason. If the homestead exemption increase passes in November, the city estimates it will lose $5.5 million to $5.6 million a year by fiscal 2029, a sum its staff report translates into 37 police officers. Adding a $1.7 million park to that ledger was never going to survive a budget season in which City Manager Karie Friiling described her first three months as a “doozy.”
—The county has a deadline of its own. The interlocal agreement that governs shared oversight of the two parks expires Sept. 30, 2028. Some decision about who runs Ted Sperling Park has to be made within two years, whether or not the city wants it.
—Why the county wanted out
—The pitch for a transfer was never really about efficiency. It was about enforcement. Because the park is county property inside city limits, the county has no police force of its own to send there. It depends on the Sarasota Police Department, the Sheriff’s Office and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, and for years none of them treated a county beach on the city’s edge as a priority.
—The result, as former Orchid Beach resident David Rayner told the City Commission in May, was more than 360 substantive police complaints in 2022 and 2023 alone. Rayner said the county’s own staff had listed Ted Sperling first among 16 problem parks. Mayor Debbie Trice repeated that ranking twice as a caution. It turns out the caution was well placed.
—The tragedy that drove the issue was the June 2025 death of Luis Guevara, a 19-year-old Baltimore Orioles minor leaguer killed in a head-on jet ski collision off South Lido Beach. Both governments responded with ordinances. Only the county’s has gone anywhere, and it has not gone far.
—Three strikes with the state
—The county’s first plan was a 300-foot exclusion zone barring motorboats from the shoreline. The FWC signaled it would not approve one without “substantial competent evidence,” and the West Coast Inland Navigation District opposed any restriction on access. In November 2025, the county retreated to an idle speed, no wake zone within 300 feet of the park and adopted an ordinance to that effect.
—The FWC rejected that application in December. County staff resubmitted in April with more documentation. The FWC turned it down again in May, noting the county had not shown a blind corner obstructing visibility, the kind of physical hazard the state wants to see. Staff sent video of jet ski activity. In June, the FWC said no a third time, but suggested a slow speed, minimum wake zone might qualify.
—On Sept. 22, the County Commission took the hint and directed staff to apply for that lesser restriction, which requires motorboats to travel off plane with minimal wake. If the FWC approves, the county will still have to advertise and hold public hearings before adopting a new ordinance. Nobody has said how long the state review will take. The ordinance the county already adopted cannot be enforced until permitting from the FWC, the Army Corps of Engineers, the Coast Guard and the state environmental agency is complete and signage is installed.
—Enforcement in the meantime
—What has changed is policing. The Sarasota Police Department’s Marine Unit, which the city would have needed to expand had it taken the park, has issued 17 citations at South Lido this year, most for careless operation. In the spring the department released body camera video of an officer confronting an 18-year-old on the beach over an unlicensed rental, the kind of operation Rayner and others blame for the worst of the weekend chaos. County Commissioner Tom Knight has said the operators are largely from the Orlando area, not local.
—That enforcement is happening under the existing arrangement, with the city policing a county park it does not own. Ahearn-Koch’s argument in May was that ownership would make the city’s job easier. Fogle’s review found it would mostly make it more expensive.
—What’s next
—The handoff is dead for now but not forever. The 2028 expiration of the interlocal agreement guarantees the question returns, and the county’s strategic plan still lists the transfer as a goal. If Amendment 3 fails on Nov. 3, the city’s budget picture improves and the conversation could revive. If it passes, the county will have its own $87 million problem and may be less inclined to keep subsidizing a park inside another government’s boundaries.
—The larger idea that framed the May discussion, a citywide parks district with its own funding stream, was also on the joint meeting agenda as a long-term plan. A district with dedicated revenue is the only realistic mechanism under which the city could absorb a $1.7 million park without cutting something else. That is a multi-year project.
—For South Lido residents, the practical answer to years of complaints is now the same one it was in 2025: wait for the FWC. The county will submit a slow speed application. The state will review it on its own schedule. The city will keep sending marine officers to a beach it decided not to buy. And Ted Sperling Park, the region’s most contested stretch of sand, will remain exactly what it has been all along, a county park in the city that neither government is quite sure it wants.
