Laurel Oak HOA is fining motorists up to $200 for exceeding its speed limit.

Sarasota County’s kindergarten immunization rates have dropped to their lowest point in decades.

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Roughly 200 right-wing activists gathered at a Venice country club to plot a course of action.

More than 91,000 people in the Suncoast region live in rental housing. Half of them cannot afford it.

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Sarasota County left flood-prone neighborhoods at risk this hurricane season after submitting an incomplete emergency dredging request that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers rejected for expedited approval.

Two former New College Foundation finance officers say they were ousted after opposing the use of donor-restricted funds to pay President Corcoran’s salary — a move they said violated donor intent. Their claims fuel growing calls for transparency.

Homeowners across the Suncoast pay more in annual fees to developer-created districts than in taxes to their local governments. In some districts, they paid 5x more. At Lakewood Ranch, fees reached $6,300 — and that’s before HOA dues are factored in.

A Sarasota-area community’s effort to save its golf course by forming a special-purpose government district and issuing $24 million in public bonds has devolved into a bitter, years-long feud over cost, governance and transparency.

NEW: State attorney upgrades two charges against former New College communications director Fred Piccolo to felonies

The red-hot housing market that defined the Suncoast during the pandemic is now cooling. Home values in Sarasota and Manatee counties have dropped more sharply than nearly anywhere else nationwide.

When New College fired a Chinese professor last month, it marked what appears to be the first time Florida’s controversial SB 846 law has been used to remove an asylum-seeking educator — a move that civil rights groups say could set a chilling precedent.

A Chinese academic seeking asylum and authorized to work in the U.S. had been teaching at New College for nearly two years when, on March 12, the school fired him, citing a Florida law limiting public schools from employing people from certain countries.

RT @mysuncoast: Although Greenbelt was originally intended for farmers and ranchers, a recent Suncoast Searchlight investigation found the….

Dozens of Sarasota residents filled the Sarasota City Commission chambers, speaking out on a proposed performing arts center during the meeting’s public comment period.

Real estate developers are not the only ones to score major tax breaks through a decades-old law meant to preserve Florida farmland. From the Sarasota Orchestra to Mosaic and FPL, other landowners tapping Greenbelt run the gamut.

For 25 years, FSU has managed the The Ringling. Now those duties could be turned over to New College, a tiny public liberal arts college that relies on millions of dollars in state support to stay afloat. Can New College handle the responsibility?

The next phases of Sarasota's Bay Park – which include a $407 million performing arts center – face an uncertain future amid fierce debate & shifting political winds that could deprive it of the taxpayer-funded money on which its proponents had counted.

New College of Florida is on an aggressive expansion path, with the recent proposal to transfer the Ringling Museum of Art to the college being just the latest in a series of attempted – and successful – land grabs fueling the institution's growth.

From the devastating floods of the early 1960s and 1990s to last year's record-breaking rains, residents living along Sarasota's Phillippi Creek have faced repeated destruction, with floodwaters overtaking homes and roads.