Six plays the county runs to avoid dredging Phillippi Creek. Learn the pattern so you can spot it in real time.
The Playbook
Sarasota County doesn't say "no" to dredging. That would be too honest. Instead, there's a playbook — a set of recurring moves that create the appearance of progress while ensuring nothing actually gets done. Here are the six plays we've documented.
Play 1: The Permit Shuffle
Need a permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE). Need a permit from the Florida DEP. Need an environmental assessment. Need a consultant to do the assessment. Need to review the consultant's work. Each step takes months.
Meanwhile, hurricane season approaches every June.
The DEP initially granted an exemption for maintenance dredging — then reversed course, requiring a full Environmental Resource Permit (ERP). The Army Corps denied an emergency dredging request, insisting on the standard permitting process. Two agencies, two denials, months lost.
The permits aren't the problem. The lack of urgency in pursuing them is.
Play 2: The Department Shuffle
Ask Stormwater about dredging. They say it's Field Services. Field Services says it's the Waterway and Canal Inland Navigation District (WCIND). WCIND says they only handle navigation channels — not creek maintenance. Back to Stormwater.
No single department owns the problem, which means no single department is accountable for solving it.
This isn't an accident. It's a structure that makes accountability nearly impossible.
Play 3: The Study
When in doubt, commission another study.
- The 1987 Master Plan produced 342 pages of recommendations. Most were never implemented.
- A 2008 study found the creek essentially unchanged since 1969 — four decades of sediment buildup, documented and ignored.
- Each new study restates what the last one found, buys another 12–18 months, and costs six figures.
Studies aren't action. They're the substitute for action.
Play 4: The Funding Gap
"We don't have the money."
This is the most common excuse — and the easiest to disprove.
- $33.5 million currently sits in stormwater reserves.
- $339 million has been collected from property owners over 14 years.
- Yet 114 stormwater projects totaling $285.5 million remain unfunded — a perpetual backlog used to justify inaction on any single project.
The money exists. It goes to internal overhead — fleet services, IT chargebacks, administrative costs. Roughly 60% of stormwater "expenses" never touch actual stormwater infrastructure.
(See Follow the Money for the full breakdown.)
Play 5: Declare Victory Early
Do the minimum — high-spot dredging at a handful of locations — then declare "Phase 1 complete" and walk away.
This is the current threat. The middle section of Phillippi Creek and the oxbow areas are at risk of being quietly dropped from scope. If the county dredges a few visible spots near bridges and announces success, the political pressure evaporates — and the creek stays clogged where it matters most.
Watch for the phrase "Phase 1 complete" without a funded, scheduled Phase 2.
Play 6: The Scope Shrink
Tell the Board of County Commissioners and the public you'll pursue "maximum allowable dredge." Tell the Army Corps something smaller. Hope nobody notices.
They noticed.
On February 12, 2026, consultants presented a scope to USACE that did not match what the BCC had been told. The project's interim director — unfamiliar with the project — attended the critical USACE meeting while the actual project lead (Quartermaine) was absent.
This is the most dangerous play because it happens in technical documents that residents rarely see. The language shifts gradually:
- "Maximum allowable dredge" becomes "maintenance dredging"
- "Maintenance dredging" becomes "high-spot removal"
- "High-spot removal" becomes "monitoring"
By the time anyone notices, the scope has shrunk by half.
Play 7: The Ordinance Shell Game
Perhaps the most revealing play of all: point residents to the wrong law.
Sarasota County's Section 110-311 (Article IX), enacted in 1994, explicitly requires the county to maintain stormwater "conveyance systems." This is the legal foundation for creek maintenance — it's unambiguous.
But when residents asked about maintenance, the county consistently pointed them to Article XXX — a 2001 navigational ordinance that created a petition-based program. Under Article XXX, residents had to petition and partially fund waterway maintenance, as if it were a neighborhood amenity rather than a county obligation.
In July 2025, former county attorney Schoettle-Gumm confirmed that Article XXX was never intended to address stormwater maintenance. It was a navigational program. The county had been directing residents to the wrong ordinance for years — effectively hiding behind a petition process to avoid its Article IX responsibilities.
When residents pointed this out, county staff couldn't explain why the language was there or how the conflation had persisted for so long.
The takeaway: The county had a legal obligation to maintain these waterways since 1994. The obligation was in the code the entire time. Residents just kept getting sent to the wrong section.
One More Thing: Outdated Standards
The county's design storm criteria — the engineering standards that determine how much water infrastructure must handle — are based on rainfall data from 1996. That's 29+ years outdated.
In an era of intensifying storms and rising flood risk, Sarasota County is literally planning for yesterday's weather.
What Residents Can Watch For
These are the warning signs that the playbook is running:
- Language shifts — "maximum allowable" quietly becomes "maintenance" becomes "high-spot removal"
- Timeline slippage — deadlines pass without explanation or updated schedules
- Key people missing from key meetings — decision-makers absent when commitments are made
- Scope changes buried in technical documents — what's presented to USACE doesn't match what's told to the BCC
- "Phase 1 complete" without Phase 2 — declaring victory before the work is done
The pattern only works if nobody's watching. You're watching now.