hi i'm john knopper with the city of sarasota welcome to another edition of city life we all know what this iconic statue on the bay front symbolizes but two thousand and fifteen is going to be an extra special year for unconditional surrender i'll tell you why and we'll head up to the north trail to visit the indian beach sapphire shores neighborhood as we look at all these beautiful mature trees and we don't realize this was mostly slash pine and palmetto but first it's pretty easy to put a value on a house or a car but how do you tell the worth of one of best assets the bay a new report released this year does just that numbers were a lot larger than we thought they were going to be we didn't realize there were so much regional use of our pay area here folks come to sarasota to recreate from all around this region from st pete with the use of economic valuations studies into terming vital natural resources like sarasota bay is extremely important and this policy board is really really excited and pleased to be part of the first effort first comprehensive economic value ation study of sarasota bay this two year study is based on established scientific based research protocols so there are two different components of the study and one is an economic impact study the economic impact study is similar to economic impact studies that are done when you think of a new sports stadium so the idea is when revenue comes from outside of the county what how does that revenue feed into the system and from that we have what we call a multiplier effect and so this leads to increase revenue it leads to increased jobs it leads to increased tax revenue those types of things so we can create an estimate these are a listing of the impaired waters that we still have in our system that we don't have the impaired waters any longer in sarasota back in  visitors so when you have an oil spill for example the oil spill can lead to a loss of wetlands or loss of seagrass beds that type of thing and people use those for a whole host of things including fishing their nursery grounds  they improve water quality so we know that there are important components of our day to day life and so having an economic value of these things gives us an idea of maybe what the damage is for the well being of our visitors and definitely  estimates from this study can be used in planning so in this case if they're trying to decide between different alternatives for management they can they have some kind of economic estimate that gives them an idea at least more information on how to make the best decision possible they can as also go and look after they do projects and it should help them have some information on maybe what is the you know what's the benefit for for people in this region here the other thing that our overall baby program report is suggesting is that storm water is one of the remaining issues that we're going to have to deal with and since a lot of our area is already built out we're go we're living over here over the next thirty to forty as we all know widening roads and building new projects are very very expensive and so the best most cost effective way to make traffic work better is to make traffic work better and facility we already have and so by making the timing work as efficiently as possible and adjusting for time of day and be able to address incidents that gives us the ability to get the most of the existing ro our system didn't speak to manatee county so while we had some coordination within the city we were able to have our signals coordinate very effectively with the other jurisdictions if our timings work ordinated then all  sudden you're stuck at intersection adjusting to another to the other system so now the goal is that when you're driving up forty one will coordinate all those signals so that you can drive a heated during during normal hours now obviously when it's really congested when we've got you know peak hour that does still impact the intersections but overall we'll be able to make the system more more effectively now we've got controllers and video that have a lot more information provide a lot more data  a better conduit to communicate that and you can only run so much information and so much data through a copper line so the program is to upgrade the communication infrastructure by putting in fiber and then putting in controllers that are more capable of functions are more robust can a lot more with them and then being able to get that data and evaluate the operational character one thing that people have asked about we hear from is the cameras and there's a variety of different cameras at the intersection so you just want to let people know because we'll see we'll see some of the wonder if that's  there is information at intersection where there's existing red light running hammers and that's a project that was put together by the police department to help discouraging people from running red lights because that can be a big safety issue and so those intersections are posted we also have cameras or loop detectors and those we have video cameras to look at when there's traffic stacked up at the intersection so the controller knows that there's cars waiting and then we have other intersections that have loops to do the same thing so you'll see some of the longer cameras that are there to do loop detection or instead of loop detection and then we have others that don't have those cameras were still relying on the loop that's in the pavement and then the cameras that are part of the a t m s project that are connected to the controllers are round and they are little round cameras and so you may see all those at one intersection or you may see just one or two but we still have a lot of parts to implement what we can do right now is we can be more proactive in addressing problems that used to be that most of the information we got would be from somebody calling our office calling public works and saying that they something didn't work right and then we would have to go to the intersection and see what's going on now there is a traffic management center that's operational in manatee county and they can look at all of the intersections we have video cameras and all the state roadways and a few of the non state roadways and they can observe what's going on visually they also get information from the controllers and so they will provide a report to us each day of things that they think might be an issue and then our public works folks can go out there and address those without waiting for someone to call in and say that they see something not working properly and then the city has what we're calling our many many traffic control center because we can also look at things from the computer and address a lot of a lot of situations there and we can pull up information from the different intersections and also if we do have an emergency if we have a situation where we need to be monitoring we've got a hurricane evacuation we've got some incident within the city we can man the local t m c here and make adjustments provide information to police fire locally as well so a couple things that drivers will notice right now is that we have new controllers some of the newer ones are larger so you'll see some of the older ones that have been upgraded are still the existing like washing machine size controllers but the new ones are more like refrigerator sized controllers and so you'll be able to tell which intersections have been upgraded and then some of the functionality of the intersections have been improved so you will see some of the intersections operating differently than you used to  example would be us three want to where it was pretty much always the same you'd have the east west left turns and then you'd have the east west through well now to accommodate when certain volumes are heavier than others the d o t has revised that so there may be times where you a through in a left or you may not get a left at all because that's not what's needed at that particular moment so it can it can adapt to the times more easily now that's what you'll see right now the d o t is also working on improving the overall timings and so while you're going to see some changes intersection i intersection hopefully within the next year you'll see improvements through the corridor as they implement these revised timings and use all the new tools available to them with the advanced trailers the city has done some of the work so far as to sarasota county but both the city and the county have some additional work that we're doing sarasota county has what they call their face for which is going to include  total and parts of a of the city is beginning to do the design for dr martin luther king corridor in addition to that the state is working on the signage for i seventy five which is also really part of this advanced  information system because then they can provide information to people when they're getting off the interstate as to drive times one exit to the other utilizing the data that we get from the from traffic information and then hopefully another phase will be bringing those signs on to the so that you can coordinate between arterial and and the interstate if there's an incident you want to know what time and how long it takes to get from one point together whether this is the best exit or entrance to used to the interstate those types of things in addition to adding some new controllers will be doing a city timing project in sarasota county will be doing a type of project as well so hopefully we'll be able to improve the times for the whole region over the next twelve to eighteen month ake sure you're watering your yard on the proper day in the city of syria so that residents with the odd house number those ending with one three five seven or nine are allowed to irrigate on thursday residents with an even house number zero two four six or eight can water on tuesdays for more information call the city of sarasota public works department of nine five five two three  blue plus you but we didn't do it alone students from the ringling school of arts and design spent their spring semester working with the s p d to create a marketing and branding campaign the blue plus you initiative is an integral part of the s p d community policing outreach with the blue representing law enforcement and the plus meeting working together and you as the citizens and community blue plus you also reinforces making it easier to navigate for the information in the public once we found that i mean there's so many resources and so much information in the sarasota even on the site but it was it was a little difficult to navigate through and so what we did as  interviewed a lot of people especially in the sarasota farmers market and around town to kind of get some feedback as to what they were looking for when they went on these websites you know they wanted to get local records they wanted to get records and and information about the community that wasn't easily as available as it was before so we restructured the website now to kind of appeal to that and to make it a lot easier for people to you and you can check our new website for community events such as blue plus you plus movie night or you can check out when officers are at special events like shop with a cop that we do every december when we take kids from the housing authority out to target to buy them gifts for christmas and stopping the flow of illegal drugs entering our city is a never ending job for the sarasota police department after several months of excellent police work and with the assistance of several other agencies the s p d was able to disrupt a large organization of drug dealers in our community kept in patrick ledwith explains  what we were doing is targeting upper level suppliers of more products into the sarasota area these individuals were responsible for bringing a large amount on a weekly basis of manatee area and it started with an investigation into a group of street level drug dealers we monitored their activity for quite a while and we kind of focused on one in particular we were very fortunate in that these folks were very comfortable in doing what they were doing and they led us to who was supplying them who in turn then led us to a larger source who was bringing in major amounts of cocaine from from the miami area one of the major complaints that i get from neighborhoods is especially nor sarasota is the open air drug markets that occur so part of our strategy is to tack to those street sellers but the other prong of our attack is to get folks like this who we feel are your suppliers i think once the investigation started unraveling we expected that we were going to see some arjan amounts of cocaine when not nothing like what we saw which was eventually on that first search warrant we did was twelve kilos of cocaine came out of that first initial phase of the deal it was quite a bit for what we've seen around here lately we knew eventually how what we wanted to do when it came time to go it was getting all the boots on the ground right away and getting those resources to where they knew what they were doing getting briefed up and haven't a plan to execute a search warrants because some were done simultaneously some were done the first initial one was actually a deal that was going on in progress and then subsequently thereafter we kept doing search warrants that day so it was all kind of a dynamic type operation i think it had a tremendous impact at least initially a lot of the open air drug markets were were all in say gone but they were it was less of it available so it's had i think today it still has had a positive effect you know several months later and you know we did this operation in two phases with the did the initial where we got the sources and then we had a warrant sweep afterwards because we did another search warrant on another major target and so we hit him once hard and then we hit  again hard so we kind of kept him on our toes for quite a while so it's a cat and mouse game you know as we do things the circuits in a bunch of them they start changing the way they do things what w hope is there was thirty three total arrests and in this operation what we're hoping is that a lot of these folks are going to see some significant prison sentences and that's going to keep them off the street and keep them from coming out and you know reoffending within our community i mean some could be looking at anywhere from fifteen years to life from birth so we're hoping that that in conjunction with some other programs that we have like our drug market intervention where we're trying to redirect to break cycles with folks that don't have significant criminal histories you know get them job training and education services maybe job placement you know get them to break that if you have any questions or comments about these stories are anything regarding the s p d call three six six eight thousand and check out our new web site at sarasota p d dot org i'm police chief part of that the peano and don't go away there's more city life because the state street parking lot may be closed but downtown businesses are still open with plenty of parking opportunities looking to enjoy all the main street has to offer to make a dash for the whole foods parking garage with plenty of upper deck covered parking taking a stroll down palm avenue then look no further than the palm avenue parking garage offering clean and well lit spaces park a couple hours on the whole day and don't forget the numerous on street spaces close to all the things you enjoy so park smart park happy welcome back to city life august fourteenth one thousand nine hundred five is the day this iconic image of the sailor kissing the nurse in times square was born it was b j day in the united states learned that world war two was over next year marks the seventie anniversary of that day and a national nonprofit is leading the charge to stage a big show of gratitude from coast to coast  anniversary and next year is the big seventieth anniversary and we're trying to be the four runners to make everybody aware that next year we want to get out and really party we want them to honor the veterans like that day recorded history as they did in the war you know back in two thousand and ten congress anonymously put forth a bill that the second day in august would be dispirit of forty five day so they'll never be forgotten because it's going to be on the calendar now so we'll be there for future generations to see and that's what we need to do is we need to teach our children and our grandchildren about them before they're gone tell them to go out there and talk to their grandparents or great grandparents and get the stories before they're all gone we have been to forty three states and we have been to over twenty five thousand miles with the r v we go to veterans homes we're not funded by the forty five we are on our own money that we go across but they did the r v for eyes the bringing notice to it they help us to get in to places like wonderful of him to do that because you know that's a symbol of you know a sarah you know you go to a cemetery and that's the symbol of the war but you come here and this is the symbol of peace and we believe that everybody should be happy about having a symbol for peace you know next year there's going to be a couple of special bangs there's going to be the seventieth anniversary of the laying of playing every and playing of taps around the world and there's going to be a convoy that's going to go from the east coast to the west coast and about thirty five miles away but anyway these are two of the special events that we know is happening just for inner peace and energy you know i mean it's a great calling place he's got the jungle gardens we've got you know we've got our little indian beach where we go and walk into sunsets there i'm not a history buff by any stretch but i do know that this neighborhood is one of the first planted in sarasota and it's one of the oldest in sarasota my father was a professional photographer and so for many years he was taking photographs here and the piece was primarily about the vegetation changes we look at all these beautiful mature trees we don't realise this was mostly slash pine and palmetto but i mean you know the just just walking in general it's a great neighborhood to walk but it's well sidewalks and  you have a lot of people who walk around walk or dogs and walk themselves and i'm an architect so i've studied some of the patterns of the healthy relationships of a good neighborhood you tend to be out more you tend socialize so it's a really positive thing is it's a great neighborhood i mean people want to help each other you know in the in a course in the neighborhood is kind of divided you know you've got the south you know in the end it's all different things the not the middle part of this neighborhood is but there was a lot of different little traces of older things here if there's one word and i really don't like the word but it expresses it well its diversity and we have for instance just inland values and types we have homes that were pretty you world war two sears catalog homes all the way up to the two largest homes in sarasota county that's the cod is on and a private residence about a half mile south where else can you go into a neighborhood where you've got houses that are you know in the in the low hundreds thousands to the fourteen million you know i didn't want to walk around you know where else in the in the city do they had artist with you know lawyers and you know i mean they were all do you know real neighborhood the kind that people fantasize about probably oh this is the way it was with white picket fences that we all knew or neighbors well guess what indian beach saffar shores we know our neighbors the people you can do architecture anywhere but without good people feeling it worth living there and i love it