Flo Entler
Sarasota City Commission
At-Large Candidate
Flo Entler has lived in Sarasota for 37 years. She's President of the Arlington Park Neighborhood Association and previously served as Second Vice President of the Coalition of City Neighborhood Associations. Her professional background spans bookkeeping, law office administration, advertising sales, and human resources; she now owns her own fitness coaching business.
A few of the issues Entler has championed as a neighborhood leader:
Overbuilding
Sarasota lets developers build nearly four times the size of what they're replacing along major corridors: up to six stories and 100 units an acre, if they label part of the project "attainable." Under the city's own rules, "attainable" can mean a household earning $120,000 a year. Entler says that's not workforce housing, and the corridor bonus formulas need to be rolled back to a scale the city's roads and drainage can actually handle.
Green Space
Entler has fought repeated attempts to privatize and commercialize Sarasota's public parks: at Ken Thompson Park, Payne Park, and Bobby Jones. Her argument is consistent: once the city gives green space away, it can't get it back. With development accelerating across the city, she says every acre of public green space needs to be protected now, not reconsidered project by project as development pressure builds.
Infrastructure Capacity
The corridor zoning changes that allow massive increases in density were approved without a clear answer to basic questions: Can the roads handle the traffic? Is there enough water? Can the drainage keep up? Entler raised these questions before the approvals happened and says the city is still without good answers. She wants growth tied to demonstrated infrastructure capacity, not approved first and assessed later.
Stand Up for Sarasota is a political committee dedicated to giving voters factual information about City Commission candidates' records on growth, neighborhoods, and infrastructure.