Sarasota & Manatee Counties news thread

[wondermint2]

Grieving Sarasota family gets help this holiday from nonprofits and Season of Sharing

For full article:

https://www.newsbreak.com/sarasota-f...son-of-sharing

Refusing to fight over the trailer and wanting to put the drama behind her, Laura decided to make a fresh start. Late last year she moved to Bradenton to stay with her mother, starting a job at Goodwill Manasota in December of 2022 – her first time back in the formal workforce in years.

She excelled at her job. Within months, she had worked her way up to supervisor of cashiers.

“I’m everywhere. If you see me, I’m running around the store like a chicken without a head,” she said.

But she and the kids were still without a place of their own. Once more they were sandwiched in the home of family members – this time, hers.

Amid a region-wide crisis in workforce housing availability, Laura had put her name on a waiting list at Harvest House for one of the nonprofit’s affordable rentals. But as spring turned to summer, she was starting to despair.

“We’ve been through a lot,” she said of herself and her children.

Then, in late June, she got a call from a woman at Harvest House. A two-bedroom apartment had just become available. Could she get there to fill out some paperwork?

“I was shocked,” Laura recalled. But while the paperwork went well, there was another problem. Laura had the $600 for the deposit and a little more for the move. However, nothing remained for the first month’s rent.

At Goodwill, Cate Thorp, a Good Partner Coach, found a solution: Season of Sharing, which paid $600 in rent for July. That month, Laura moved in with the kids – Christian, now 16, and Reyna, now 6.

For the first time in a long time, the family had a place just for them. Laura was thrilled to give Christian a room of his own. The food in the fridge was all theirs and they could take showers as long as they like.

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*Season of Sharing was created 22 years ago as a partnership between the Herald-Tribune and the Community Foundation of Sarasota County to get emergency funds to individuals and families on the brink of homelessness in Sarasota, Manatee, Charlotte and DeSoto counties. There are no administrative fees and no red tape – every dollar donated goes to families in need to help with rental assistance, utility bills, child care and other expenses.

You can donate to Season of Sharing by going to: https://cfsarasota.org

or calling 941-556-2399. You can also mail a check to Season of Sharing, Community Foundation of Sarasota County, 2635 Fruitville Road, Sarasota, FL 34237.

[wondermint2]

Sarasota Teacher of the Year: An innovative 'child whisperer'

For full article:

https://www.newsbreak.com/news/32760...hild-whisperer

After working for ten years in law enforcement as a sheriff’s deputy, Josette Ortega took a big risk. The single mother of two boys, ready for a change and the opportunity to be more present for her children, went back to school and studied education. “Going back to school with the young kids,” Ortega said, “it was difficult.” But she persisted and is grateful she did.

Like her mother and two younger sisters, she began teaching. Ortega taught elementary school in New Bedford, Massachusetts, where she grew up, and she has never looked back. “I absolutely love it,” she said. “It was my gift to teach.”

Now a veteran educator of almost 20 years, the 2024 Sarasota County Schools Innovation Teacher of the Year has taught all levels of elementary school, first in New Bedford and then in Orange County, Florida, where she has family. Three years ago, drawn to Sarasota to be closer to her first grandchild, she found a job at Dreamers Academy.

Dreamers Academy is a dual-language K – 5 Spanish immersion public charter school. Its model is, by its very nature, innovative, with students learning across subjects in both English and Spanish. Students will study math using English terms one day and the next day will use Spanish.

For Ortega, the school has been a wonderful fit. She loves celebrating Hispanic culture and is proud to be a Latina teacher, modeling the profession to her Hispanic students, reflecting their experiences at the front of the classroom, and showing a pathway they can pursue.

She also thrives on the unique challenge of teaching concepts in two languages. She loves seeing how quickly her students learn a new language and the new worlds it opens as they do.

But even before starting at Dreamers Academy, Ortega, instinctually, was an innovative teacher. However, for her, innovation isn’t just about using the latest technology or the newest strategies. Ortega believes innovative teaching is about being flexible, being able to pivot, and especially being in tune with her students and their unique experiences.

[wondermint2]

Surplus of Toys for Tots donations brings more smiles this Christmas (Video)

For full article & video:

https://www.mysuncoast.com/2023/12/2...outputType=amp

A rented U-Haul doubled up as Santa’s sled in Manatee County Saturday morning. The truck was full of thousands of donated holiday treasures collected by Toys for Tots of Manatee County.

Those toys are now headed for Manatee County churches as well as migrant centers to help families in need this holiday season.

Toys for Tots officials told ABC 7 they finished off their regular toy distribution at the former DeSoto Square Mall parking lot last weekend, yet the toy donations continued to pour in at Manatee County drop-off sites.

Now, the 23 additional bikes and 250 toys will help create more smiles this Christmas.

“People were generous, I mean they just came out of the woodwork with toys and money,” said Manatee County assistant Toys for Tots coordinator Bob Fields.

Fields added that besides the surplus of toys, more than $20 thousand dollars in money donations had been collected to help the non-profit. Saturday’s donations are slated to be taken to an area church then distributed next week.

“These people are the hardest workers, and they don’t get a lot of recognition, but if it wasn’t for them who would be out doing all the stuff in the fields and doing all the stuff the richer people won’t do?” said Palmetto Presbyterian Church member Karen Euga who’ll be helping to distribute the goods to families in need.

[wondermint2]

Boat Ramp Parking or Dense Development?

For full article:

https://thebradentontimes.com/storie...elopment,67630

Do you enjoy the waterfront amenities that Manatee County has to offer? Did you possibly even move here because of them? Do you enjoy the regatta boat races, festivals, and fishing tournaments hosted by the city at Riverside Park?

If you are an outdoor enthusiast, especially a boater, you should know what’s going on in the City of Palmetto and how it affects you as a resident of Manatee County.

We are a community with over 25,000 registered boats (2021 FLHSMV statistics), yet we have a mere 250 permanent parking spaces at county and city boat ramps combined—an enormous deficit. The county’s only new boat ramp project on the books is approximately three years away and will add 88 parking spots with four launch spots in West Bradenton. The average boat ramp project takes four to six years. It has become more and more difficult to move forward with any new waterfront projects since our shores are shallow, most with sea grasses to consider. This requires multiple layers of government agency approvals and is timely and costly if obtainable.

Weigh this out against the amount of people moving into our county daily.

[wondermint2]

This is an opinion piece from Sarasota Herald-Tribune columnist Chris Anderson.

Christian Ziegler isn't the first Florida GOP scandal

For full article:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...736ed245&ei=40

Christian Ziegler needs to do the right thing and step down as Chairman of the Florida Republican Party.

Jim Greer did.

Does anyone remember this guy Greer? Probably not, just the same way no one will remember Ziegler in a few years.

Anyway, Greer was the chair of the Florida GOP from 2006 to 2010, and he created a situation actually messier than the one Ziegler finds himself in.

[wondermint2]

Strings unbound: Violinist Itzhak Perlman leads 20 years of Sarasota training program

For full article:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/music/news...am/ar-AA1lW3Ie

Chatting on a Zoom call a couple of days after attending a White House state dinner for the Prime Minister of Australia, renowned violinist Itzhak Perlman and his wife, Toby, are still buzzing over the excitement of the event and the different ways they reacted to the evening.

The founders of the winter Perlman Music Program residency for young string players in Sarasota were at the Oct. 28 dinner that was held amid the Israel-Hamas war and on the night of a mass shooting in Maine that took President Joe Biden away from the party.

“He left the dinner. I saw him leave and thought that’s odd, then he came back,” said Toby Perlman, who described it as a “fun evening, a different experience than I ever had any place else.¨ Their first state dinner was during Richard Nixon’s administration and was “white tie and tails and long gloves for the women. This was black tie, and fun and we like the guy in the White House.”

Itzhak Perlman was thinking about the music. He was supposed to perform, as was the pop group the B-52s, “but they felt it was not the time for it,” he said. Still, he noticed the Marine Band playing in different combinations, “quartets, a harp, a flute duo, and a whole orchestra. And you can always look for people you have only seen on TV and star gaze,” he said.

The Perlmans are now preparing for the 20th-anniversary residency of the Perlman Music Program/Suncoast, the annual winter training program that brings 30 young string players to Sarasota. They study with professional musicians in small groups, master classes and one-on-one sessions. Many of the classes and rehearsals are free and open to the public at the University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee campus. It is an outgrowth of the original summer PMP program on Shelter Island, New York.

The week culminates with the annual Celebration Concert at 5 p.m. Jan. 6 in the Sarasota Opera House, followed by a dinner at Michael’s on East.

Itzhak Perlman said the program gives “our kids a chance to perform for a serious audience. When we have our works in progress, it gives them an opportunity to experience a certain amount of tension or nervousness, with the adrenaline. It’s good to have that experience in performing.”

Nearly 100 percent of the participants stay with music for a career. “A few drift off to something else, but it’s very few and they do stuff on a really high level. We have a couple of doctors,” Toby Perlman said. “And we had one lawyer, out of 750 alumni, that’s not much,” Itzhak Perlman added.

[wondermint2]

Top residential real estate sales for 2023 in Lakewood Ranch

A home in The Concession tops the year's Lakewood Ranch sales at $5.65 million.

For full article:

https://www.yourobserver.com/news/20...akewood-ranch/

Although the top East County sale of 2023, a $5.65 million home in the Concession, didn't measure up to 2022's top sale of $7,090,000, multimillion dollar home sales were more commonplace this year.

The 15th top sale of 2022 was a $1,992,100 home and that year saw 11 homes sell for $3 million or more. In 2023, 23 homes sold for $3 million or more.

Here is a look at the top 15 sales of 2023.

[wondermint2]

Bradenton vet survived D-Day at Normandy. He turns 100 on Christmas Eve.

For full article:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world...ve/ar-AA1lW1fn

Cosmo Uttero landed on Omaha Beach at Normandy as a member of the 175th regiment of the U.S. Army's 29th Infantry Division on June 6, 1944.

The 20-year-old private from Wellesley, Massachusetts, almost drowned during the landing but went on to fight through Europe during World War II and later reenlisted so he could continue to court a young German woman, Erika, who would later become his wife and mother of their eight children.

Uttero, who received his high school diploma at age 97, will turn 100 on Christmas Eve – though his daughter Elizabeth Casey organized a small celebration at home Dec. 23.

He is still an active member of Florida West Post 2 of the 29th Division Association, which meets the third Saturday of each month at the Red Lobster in Bradenton.

Post Commander Sean Patrick Malloy wanted to make sure people know about Uttero and his story, “how he was able to survive the horrors of D-Day and also into Germany, fighting the Germans.”

“He’s so mild mannered, he’s so quiet,” Malloy said of Uttero, who he has known for about a decade. “I try to look in his eyes and think, ‘Where did that strength come from on the beaches of Normandy and fighting for almost four years.”

Mallloy admits to having a special affection for Uttero, whose story mirrors that of his own father, Patrick Malloy, a 24-year-old platoon commander in Company B of the 121st Engineer Battalion of the 29th Division who was wounded at Normandy.

[wondermint2]

Bad weather? Rough seas? No problem for these Bradenton fishermen looking for mullet

For full article:

https://ca.news.yahoo.com/bad-weathe...105000030.html

When low pressure followed by a strong cold front crossed Florida with tropical-storm-like conditions this past week, you would think boat ramps would be completely empty.

No one is crazy enough to head out when seas are calling for 6 to 10 feet, are they?

But for generations of local families, these conditions are what is needed to start money rolling in as they head out to fill boats with one of the most commonly seen Florida fish.

“Two of my buddies had two boatloads a day during this past front,” says angler Trever Flathman, who is a full-time commercial fisherman. A boatload could be 3,000 to 6,000 pounds depending on the size of the boat.

“But it’s been a pretty slow season so far. The price has been lackluster and there was only one huge front that was so bad we weren’t able to capitalize on it,” Flathman said.

What Flathman and others are looking for this time of year are roe mullet. Usually after Thanksgiving, mullet head offshore in giant schools to spawn.

Bigger mullet full of eggs are known for their red roe, while smaller fish usually have white roe. Red roe prices fluctuate yearly, with a price of around $1 a pound (whole fish) this year and white roe being between 10 cents and 20 cents a pound. What is sought after is the roe and not so much the meat.

[wondermint2]

This is this week's general interest video. I'll try to post one general interest video per week on Sundays.

#1 BEST PLACE TO LIVE in Florida in 2023-2024 (near beach, top schools, new homes)!!!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0iTNtobdDM