Some residents say Manatee pulled 'bait and switch' on Myakka River monitoring

When the late Manatee County commissioner Carol Ann Felts made a motion on Sept. 16, 2025 to direct county staffers to come up with the budget, funding and personnel needed to take “into account water quality standards and environmental standards that we should have been doing all along,” she was clearly talking about the Myakka River.

With Commissioner Tal Siddique absent, commissioners voted 6-0 in favor of Felts’ motion.

But seven months later, Felts’ plan to hire two additional staff members to monitor the river has morphed into two part-time technicians under the Planning and Zoning department who will work throughout all of Manatee County. 

After Commissioner Bob McCann requested the update at the April 7 commission meeting, some Myakka City residents called the move a “bait and switch,” to which McCann agreed.

“We didn’t hire two people just to hire two people and expand the staff,” he said. “We hired them specifically for this purpose and the environmental protections in the Myakka River.”

McCann noted that this was especially relevant since Manatee County implemented a hiring freeze Jan. 15.

Myakka City’s Heidi Minihkeim brought paperwork from Felts that laid out Felts’ intentions to hire environmental field inspectors that would proactively monitor the Myakka River basin and inspect development sites to ensure compliance with best management practices and erosion and sediment control measures.

Deputy County Administrator Bryan Parnell gave an overview of the two positions, but said Director of Development Services Nicole Knapp would need to return at a future date to talk about the specific job descriptions and location monitoring sites. 

The information Parnell had to offer was that the technicians started Dec. 29 and Jan. 5, and both had received a series of training sessions from January through March.

McCann made a motion to bring Knapp back to provide more information. The motion was unanimously approved with commissioners Mike Rahn and Jason Bearden absent, but a date as to when Knapp will provide that information was not set. 

Following the vote, Siddique told the East County Observer that the workload was not great enough to focus those two positions solely on the Myakka River. 

Because comparisons have been made between Sarasota County’s monitoring efforts versus Manatee County’s efforts, Siddique noted that Manatee did not pursue the Wild and Scenic River designation that Sarasota did in the 1980s because there was so much agricultural land along the Myakka River in Manatee County. 

“(The designation) would have limited the agricultural land use surrounding the river, essentially banning the farms from operating there,” Siddique said. “Now, it’s a different world, so we’re interested in those designations, but there isn’t much we can do because Senate Bill 180 is prohibiting us from enacting any protections.” 

Senate Bill 180 prohibits local governments from taking any measures that could be deemed “more restrictive and burdensome” on development. 

Because of the wild and scenic designation, the Sarasota side of the Myakka River is monitored by Chris Oliver, an environmental specialist with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. 

Oliver paddles the 14 miles within the river’s designation once a month to monitor the wildlife, plants and look for signs of pollution and invasive species. 

How Oliver manages the river in Sarasota County is more along the lines of what residents expected of the new hires in Manatee County. 

Liz Arnold, a Myakka City resident and a candidate for Felts’ vacant District 1 seat, told commissioners and staff that they need to “live up to their promises.”