Preamble |
Progressive Sarasota is seeking to build a thriving community, focusing on the living conditions of working people and persons who have fallen on hard times. Many of us are economically worse off than our parents, which must be addressed through improved access to dignified work with living wages, to healthcare, to housing, to education, and to nature. We seek to pass on this community in better shape to future generations, which requires responding vigorously to the economic and ecological crises we are facing. This platform attempts to use best practices to achieve its goals and is a living and breathing document. As knowledge and technology advances, best practices will be superseded by even better practices, and this document will be changed accordingly, with constant input from progressive friends and allies.
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Living wages and good jobs |
Even during boom years, nearly half of Sarasota County students live in low-income households. We must create more living-wage jobs that lift families out of poverty. Support a statewide, inflation-adjusted $15/hour minimum wage, including for tipped workers and farmworkers. Create and promote buy-local programs. City and county must preferentially contract local businesses that pay living wages. City and county should embrace unions. Ensure pay equity for women in school board, city and county jobs. Ensure at least 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave for school board, city and county employees. Stop privatizing and outsourcing public services.
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Support local jobs and companies |
The county economic development program must stop poaching companies from elsewhere. Do not provide financial incentives for relocation or expansion. Instead, implement an “Economic Gardening” program: Promote local small and midsize businesses with growth potential, by providing access to networks, information and skills, and help them navigating local bureaucracy. Focus on high value-added companies that export goods and services outside this area, and on “green” companies. Support green-industry job creation. Support and promote local agriculture and food production. Expand vocational schools and programs, focus on green-industry, agricultural, medical and other human-care skills. Support creation of apprenticeship programs within the public school system, in partnership with local companies. Support creation of cooperatives.
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A people's budget |
Voters must be included in budget priority setting. Minimize sales taxes. Instead increase impact fees on new construction and explore the possibility of increasing property tax millage on homes worth more than $1 million that are not primary residences.
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Affordable housing |
Require a certain percentage of housing to be affordable. Create an affordable-housing fund fed with higher impact fees on new homes over a certain dollar amount. Create or join low-interest loan programs for affordable housing construction. Promote urban infill. Support Yes in My Backyard movement. Ease zoning restrictions to allow tiny houses. Support construction of more Section 8 housing. Expand subsidized-rent public housing. Reduce parking requirements for builders, while promoting housing construction around transit. Create a city- or county-owned land bank that provides life-long lease of land at low price to individual homebuilders. Restrict short-term rentals. Grant variances to developers only if they build affordable housing. Homelessness: Stop criminalizing homelessness, and provide shelter, food, healthcare, mental care. Set up a Housing First program immediately.
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Clean water |
Make polluters — including city and county — pay to clean up water and bring back water nutrient level limits. Install central sewer where it doesn’t exist. Bring up to level municipal lift stations, sewer systems and water treatment plants. Minimize fertilizer runoff. Support restrictions on phosphate mining. Make sure groundwater remains a public good. Promote and support minimizing residential and agricultural water use.
Emphasize staggered pricing to entice water savings. Renew the drinking water supply infrastructure. Responding to rising water levels and increasing salinization of groundwater, promote emerging technologies such as desalinization of seawater. Support and promote local companies with water know-how. |
Clean and affordable energy |
Create a comprehensive plan for climate change and sea level rise. Identify most vulnerable neighborhoods, plan to buy out properties and create a program to move residents to higher ground. Adapt water and sewage systems, underground power and telecom cables. Anticipate rising temperatures and extended summers. Require phase-in of all new buildings be built net zero energy.
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Protecting open space, preventing sprawl
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Reinstate strong statewide and regional land use planning. Support reinstating an institution that oversees large-scale developments impacting Florida’s natural resources.
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Healthcare for everyone |
Support expansion of Medicaid and creation of a statewide single-payer program. Short of that, promote the creation of a local provider network for the uninsured anchored around the public hospital. Set up more clinics for the uninsured population, add dental care.
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Thriving public schools |
Protect public schools. Support and subsidize daycare and kindergarten programs. Close the achievement gap. Support Community Partnership Schools and bilingual education. Embarce the teachers' union. Raise teacher starting salaries. Raise impact fee collection on new construction for schools. Support raising the Florida corporate tax rate to 7.75 percent, to fund public education Ban taxpayer funding of private schools.
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Accessible higher education
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Support tuition-free higher education at community and state colleges.
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Mobility for everyone |
Plan with priority on walking and biking. Make existing bus system functional, user-friendly and affordable. Create long-term perspective for developers through Bus Rapid Transit along US 41, from North Port to Palmetto. Create pedestrian zone in city centers. Preserve rail right-of-ways for rail. Promote and support creation of passenger rail service to Tampa and frequent express bus service to St. Petersburg. Charge for downtown parking. Promote electric mobility.
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Internet for everyone |
Create competition among Internet Service Providers by building a county-wide, publicly owned fiber-optic backbone that will be opened up to multiple — preferably local — companies to offer their service to the public. Let a city or county utility compete for Internet customers as well.
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Protecting people |
Eliminate racial profiling in policing. Minimize police interference, maximize interference of social services. Check and reduce police violence. Create more flexible rules of engagement. Stop militarization of police. Stop criminalizing poverty and homelessness. Local police will not refer to ICE. Commit to a community policing concept. Support a ban on assault weapons and stricter controls of firearm and ammunition sales.
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Equal justice |
The United States has the largest prison population in the world, and a large part of those in jail or prison are not convicted but simply awaiting trial, often because they are unable to raise money for bail. Support prison reform that lessens the use of money bail, minimizes private for-profit prisons, and curtails lengthy and minimum sentences, all the while providing education and rehabilitation for easier reentry to society. Establish diversion programs for youth and the mentally handicapped. Racial imbalances in sentencing msus be monitored and eliminated.
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Elections |
Make voting as open and accessible as possible. Implement Ranked-Choice Voting, implement restoring voting rights for ex-felons, implement and keep single-member districts in Sarasota County. Keep money out of politics.
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