On July 20, the Sarasota City Commission voted twice, unanimously both times, to start burying every overhead power and communication line from St. Armands Circle to the far end of Lido Key. The first vote hired a Largo firm called Utility Consultants of Florida for $7.95 million, beating out national names like Kimley-Horn and Bowman Consulting. The second opened an $8 million tax-exempt line of credit to pay for it before anyone has agreed to foot the bill.
That second vote is the one that matters if you are shopping for property on the island right now. The city is fronting money it expects to recover through a special assessment on roughly 3,500 households across St. Armands, Lido Key and Lido Shores. Early estimates put that assessment near $10,000 per property spread over 20 years. Nobody has voted on that number yet, and nobody will until winter. Depending on when you close, you could end up owning a home whose final carrying cost was decided after you signed.
What the City Actually Approved in July
The two July 20 votes did different jobs. The first paid Utility Consultants of Florida to do the engineering: refine which streets fall inside the assessment district, model costs down to the parcel, and coordinate with Florida Power and Light on the cutover. The second, Resolution 26R-3408, lets the city draw against an $8 million credit facility with Regions Capital Advantage to pay for that work now, with the expectation that special assessments repay the draw later.
There's a built-in risk the city accepted on the residents' behalf. If the assessment districts never get final approval, the project stops, but the city stays on the hook for the $3.17 million already spent on required engineering and outreach. Commissioners took that bet because the survey numbers were so lopsided: an October 2025 resident survey found 87 percent support for undergrounding overall, climbing to 93 percent among people whose primary residence is on St. Armands. Carl Shoffstall, president of the Lido Key Residents Association and a 24-year resident, told commissioners his neighborhood's number ran even higher, over 90 percent.
The $10,000 Figure Isn't a Number Yet, It's a Placeholder
Every recent article on this project repeats the same estimate: about $10,000 per property over 20 years. Charles Haff, vice president of the St. Armands Residents Association, gave commissioners that figure directly.
"Those are the numbers that have been discussed in our meetings with all of our residents, and that's the number people are kind of prepared for."
That is an expectation set in neighborhood meetings, not a number that has been through the engineering and legal process a special assessment district requires in Florida. Public Works Director Nikesh Patel told the commission there is no statutory minimum support threshold for a district like this one. The commission alone decides whether to require 60 percent support, 75 percent, or something else, once the consultant delivers real parcel-by-parcel numbers this winter.
What Longboat Key Actually Paid
The nearest comparison isn't a hypothetical. Longboat Key just finished its own decade-long project to bury every power line on the island, and the final numbers are public. The project cost about $43 million. Property owners are paying an average of $4,200 spread over 30 years, less than half the early Lido and St. Armands estimate, on a longer repayment schedule.
| Longboat Key (completed) | St. Armands/Lido (proposed) | |
|---|---|---|
| Total project cost | About $43 million | Up to $8 million (Phase 1 and 2 combined) |
| Households in district | Island-wide | About 3,500 |
| Average per-property assessment | About $4,200 | About $10,000 (early estimate) |
| Repayment term | 30 years | 20 years (proposed) |
The gap between those two per-property numbers isn't a red flag. It's arithmetic. A shorter 20-year term concentrates the same debt into fewer annual payments, and the Lido/St. Armands project covers a denser stretch of commercial and multi-unit frontage around the Circle, which changes the engineering cost per linear foot compared to Longboat Key's largely residential grid. The point for a buyer isn't which project is a better deal. It's that the final number for St. Armands and Lido has not been engineered yet, and the one everyone is quoting is an early planning figure from resident meetings, not a completed cost study.
The Economic Argument Underneath the Assessment
Buried utility lines are not just a resilience upgrade. Real estate research on undergrounding consistently finds that homes near visible overhead lines sell at a discount, typically in the 2 to 10 percent range. One of the more rigorous studies on the subject, examining neighborhoods in Canberra, Australia, found that buried networks added about 2.9 percent to home values, with utility-sponsored estimates running as high as 10 percent.
On a barrier island where a modest home starts at seven figures, even the conservative end of that range is worth more than the assessment itself. That is the case residents made to the commission, and it is the reason support ran as high as it did in both neighborhood surveys. The assessment is a cost with a documented return, not just a bill.
Why Your Closing Date Matters More Than the Number
Here is the sequence that actually affects a buyer today. Through this fall, the consultant is refining district boundaries and building planning-level cost estimates. This winter, staff brings parcel-level numbers back to the commission, and affected property owners get to vote. If that vote and the commission's approval both clear, the statutory resolutions, public hearings and bond process run through 2027, with a target of first billing in November 2027.
That means anyone who closes on a property inside the proposed district before the vote is finalized is buying into a number that isn't set. Special assessments in Florida attach to the parcel, not the person who owned it when the assessment was approved, so the obligation transfers at closing the same way a CDD assessment would. If you're under contract on St. Armands or Lido Key with a closing date anywhere between now and late 2027, the standard due diligence questions (what does the HOA cover, what's the flood insurance quote) now need a third: is this parcel inside the proposed utility assessment district, and has the district's cost estimate been published yet.
There's a second reason not to treat this as a straightforward line-item cost. Commissioner Jen Ahearn-Koch pushed staff during the July meeting to coordinate the utility work with a separate St. Armands drainage improvement project moving through Sarasota County, funded in part by a new state appropriation through the Florida Department of Transportation. Her stated goal was blunt: don't dig up the same streets twice. If that coordination holds, buyers evaluating a property now are really pricing in two infrastructure projects running on overlapping timelines, not one.
What This Looks Like on the Ground
The infrastructure story isn't happening in isolation. On the Lido Key beachfront, roughly 311,000 cubic yards of sand went down on the southern half of the island starting in January 2026, part of a 50-year renourishment agreement with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that schedules new sand every five years. Dune construction to stabilize that sand runs from this fall through early 2027, on almost the same clock as the utility assessment vote.
On South Boulevard of the Presidents, storefronts that took on storm damage in 2024 have filled back in. Acadia Jewels Fine Jewelry and Design opened in January, followed by a coffee, wine and market shop called Le Shop and a second location for Anna Maria Island's Chocolate Emporium in June. A few doors down, chef Simone Salustri and Amber Mayner rebuilt their closed restaurant Le Colonne as Nōnnō Umberto, which drew roughly 800 people over its first week open in January.
None of that retail recovery required a commission vote. The utility project does, and it's the piece of the island's rebuild that a buyer can't see by walking the Circle.
A Few Direct Questions
Does the assessment attach to the property or to whoever owned it when it was approved? Special assessments in Florida run with the parcel. If the district and the assessment amount are finalized before you close, you inherit whatever number was approved, the same way you would with an existing CDD or HOA special assessment already on the books.
What happens if the resident vote fails this winter? The city has said Phase 2, the actual construction and pole removal, would stop. The $3.17 million already spent on engineering and outreach stays a city expense rather than converting into a resident assessment.
Is this the same thing as a CDD fee? No. A CDD is a permanent unit of local government that can levy assessments indefinitely for operations and maintenance. This is a one-time special assessment district built to repay a specific, defined project, with a 20-year proposed term and no ongoing authority once the debt is retired.
Buying on St. Armands or Lido Key right now means buying before the answer is final. If you're evaluating a property inside the proposed district, Jesse Griffin can help you find out where that parcel actually sits in the process before you write an offer.
