- July 15, 2025
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Manatee County commissioners have made it clear that Lorraine Road and the second floor of the Lakewood Ranch Library are the two main priorities for East County in 2026.
District 5 Commissioner Bob McCann told county staff members that if they need to take money from all the other road projects in the district to fund Lorraine Road, then that’s what they need to do.
County staff members spent three days, from June 9-11, presenting their recommendations for the fiscal year 2026 budget of $2,537,460,663 to commissioners.
The recommended Capital Improvement Plan for fiscal years 2026-2030 was also included in the presentation. Out of 815 projects, 53 are new and 552 are already fully funded.
On July 31, staff members will return with a revised budget based on the commissioners’ feedback. At that time, commissioners will also approve a tentative millage rate, which is used to calculate property taxes.
The final budget will be adopted Sept. 22.
Commissioners McCann, Carol Felts and Jason Bearden have consistently voted against every project that has been proposed for Lorraine Road recently because of the need for improvements.
Last August, Lorraine Road was placed on a list of deferred projects. But moving forward, McCann, with the support of fellow commissioners, is moving the road to the top of District 5’s priority list.
“We have a district commissioner saying that he has one singular priority,” Commission Chair George Kruse said. “That priority should be honored to the extent we have the financial capacity to do so.”
To meet that goal, staff will have to return to the board with a new deferred list of projects.
Adding turn lanes to Morgan Johnson Road is likely to be the first project to land on that list. Kruse told staff not to put too much thought into the road yet because its use as a temporary detour is probably the cause of it backing up.
Right now, he and commissioner Amanda Ballard said they regularly use Morgan Johnson Road as a cut-through street, which will be unnecessary by the end of the year when the 44th Avenue East extension is finished.
“Once that flyover is done, I’m hopping on 44th Avenue East on Lakewood Ranch Boulevard,” Kruse said. “I’m never going to be on Morgan Johnson ever again, so let’s see what the real impact is.”
Morgan Johnson Road is one, small project. Several more projects will need to join the deferred list to finish Lorraine Road because the projected cost is $85.3 million. As of now, the county has only $11.2 million allocated to the improvements through fiscal year 2030.
On the first day of the budget workshops, the Lakewood Ranch Library took a small hit when an initiative to offer library hours on Sunday was removed from the budget by Commissioner Amanda Ballard.
The newest library branch in Lakewood Ranch served as a pilot program for Sunday hours. However, an average of 153 people visit the library on Sundays, which is the lowest traffic count throughout the week.
Offering Sunday hours would have cost $183,000 annually per site, and there are seven library branches across the county.
Ballard noted that none of the surrounding counties offer Sunday hours either.
By the third day of the budget workshops, the Lakewood Ranch Library was back at the top of the priority list thanks to Kruse placing it there.
“I’d like to figure out what we’re doing and do it with the second floor of the Lakewood Ranch Library,” he said. “That is incredibly valuable, usable space.”
Kruse has found it difficult to book a Town Hall at the Lakewood Ranch Library because the meeting spaces are typically already booked.
According to Deputy County Administrator Bryan Parnell, designs for the second floor are nearly 60% complete.
While the second floor is being designed as flex space, Kruse told staff members that the library itself needs to expand and suggested it could do so into some of the first floor meeting spaces once there is more space available upstairs.
The conversation over the second floor was a deja vu moment. This time last year, staff members said the second floor construction would begin May 2025.
County Administrator Charlie Bishop assured Kruse that the $6.9 million build-out is fully funded.
Staff included the $34.8 million purchase and remodel of an approximately 101,000-square-foot building at 9000 Town Center Parkway on the list of main capital improvement projects.
While located in Lakewood Ranch, the building will serve the entire county as a second administration building. The purchase price is $23.5 million, and the county expects to close on the building by September.
After a trio of hurricanes last year, staff members recommended $12.8 million go toward stormwater management and Kruse suggested that Development Services needs additional employees to catch up on permit requests.
If $12.8 million seems low in light of the damages, it is. The county will be using funds from a nearly $253 million grant from the Department of Housing and Urban Development to pay for additional stormwater repairs and improvements.
Development Services has run behind in permitting since last year's hurricane season. Department director Nicole Knapp said every step in the process comes with a running clock. If staff members get too far behind, the county is required to return the application fees.
Following Kruse's request for a list of needed employees, Knapp submitted six additional positions at a cost of nearly $860,000 that had not been initially recommended by staff in the FY26 budget.
When transportation was up for review, building more trails and better-functioning intersections was discussed as alternative solutions to the county’s overall congestion issues. Trails can divert cars off the road, while intersections are a quicker, less costly way to move cars more efficiently.
Both Kruse and Commissioner Tal Siddique pushed for trails, but each commissioner had his own point to make.
Siddique wants trails to have more “prominence” in the budget. He suggested a category be created for trails under Transportation.
Kruse wants to focus the effort on connecting existing trails instead of what he said would be wasting time and money on new neighborhood trails that don’t lead anywhere.
The commission’s next step is to schedule a work session to come up with a plan.
Intersection improvements are another small scale way to tackle the big issue of traffic congestion.
“If we fix our light patterns and we fix our intersections, we’re going to fix a lot of our problems at a much cheaper cost and a much cheaper maintenance cost long term,” Kruse said.
Intersection improvements include adding turn lanes and programming traffic signals; they're simple functional improvements that are far less intensive than widening a road from two lanes to four.
Sheriff Rick Wells made a request that he said will benefit the entire county — additional deputies.
Kruse ran some numbers after his initial budget meeting with Wells. He found that for every 3.8 employees the county has hired to keep up with the area’s population growth, the Sheriff’s Office has only hired 2.4 employees.
By Kruse's calculations, had the Sheriff’s Office hired at the same rate as the county, it would have 125 more employees right now.
Wells said the only alternative to more deputies at this point is to pay the current deputies overtime, which is more costly and continues to spread his staff too thin.
He used the crossing guard program as an example of the multitude of duties that deputies have to perform. There are 78 crossing guards. When they call in sick, deputies cover their shifts.