The Lake Sarasota Community Blog

Greetings! Welcome to the Sarasota County Community Connections e-newsletter. Please share this e-newsletter with family, friends and neighbors. Contact us if you have questions, ideas for articles, or feedback on the system, at communityconnections@scgov.net County unveils #1 Beach in USA sign for Siesta Beach Sarasota County Commissioners unveiled a sign recognizing Siesta Beach  as the "#1 Beach in the USA." The 8-foot-by-4-foot sign is located at the beachside entrance of the main pavilion. Free event promotes Newtown healthy homes A free  Healthy Homes event  will be held on Saturday, Jan. 21, from 10 a.m.-noon at the Robert L. Taylor Community Complex, 1845 34th St., Sarasota. Organized by the local Newtown/North Sarasota community in partnership with Home Depot, the event is designed to help residents learn how to keep their homes dry, ventilated, maintained, clean, pest-free, contaminant-free and safe using the principles from the Nat...

This year, the 13th Annual Florida Neighborhood Conference will be held at the Bayfront in St. Pete. Some of the most innovative and dedicated community activists and organizers will be there. Here's a quick run-down of events, and you'll find more detailed info about the workshops -- they're about everything from housing to traffic calming to making neighborhoods more livable -- here . Want a ride? Thanks to the collaborative efforts of Sarasota County, Manatee County, the City of Sarasota, and SCOPE, free transportation is available with early registration. The Florida Neighborhoods Conference is designed to assist communities in building strong neighborhood foundations by offering workshops, tours, speakers and opportunities for neighborhood advocates from small towns and large cities to network and share information. Workshop tracks include: Housing Innovation, Neighborhood Quality, Livable Community, Creating an Atmosphere of Neighborhood Collaboration, Sustaining Ne...

"...we are living in the middle of a remarkable increase in our ability to share, to cooperate with one another, and to take collective action, all outside the framework of traditional institutions." Here Comes Everybody : The Power of Organizing Without Organizations. The 12th Annual Florida Neighborhoods Conference brought some of Florida's most dynamic people together in Tallahassee this past week for three days of conversation, networking, exploration and celebration. Imagine the energy when you combine hundreds of grassroots activists, many of whom have been the catalysts for major change in their communities. They talked, schmoozed, toured, learned, argued, danced and partay-ed. Sen. Bob Graham kicked things off with a hilarious account of how his career began somewhat inauspiciously when he got kicked out of his third pre-school. Along the way he said: "We are past the point of top-down government. . .. We're now in an era where our solutions ...