SIESTA KEY
Observer
Welcome back.
PAGE 18
YOU. YOUR NEIGHBORS. YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD.
VOLUME 50, NO. 6
FREE
YOUR TOWN
•
THURSDAY, AUGUST 22, 2019
The doors stay open Community finance group, grassroots organization and charter school make a deal to save Sarasota’s YMCA. SEE PAGE 3
Eric Garwood
Let there be (colorful) light
It’s a fine mess for school speeders
Tampa Bay’s Sunshine Skyway won’t be the only iconic span soon illuminated at night with colorful lights. Our very own Ringling Causeway will get the same treatment, state transportation officials said, perhaps by this fall. As part of a regular maintenance program to replace faulty lights, the Florida Department of Transportation will install a series of programmable LED fixtures that will bathe the bridge in different colors. Don’t fear a gaudy, Griswold family Christmas-look, though. FDOT officials said the colors will flow gradually.
Sheriff’s deputies and police hand out more than 100 tickets as classes resume.
Sea turtle gets a name Give our regards to the Space Coast, Cecil. Who is Cecil, you ask? Why, she’s the green sea turtle named by Sarasota’s Carol Bishop this month in a contest promoted by Mote Marine Laboratory. Tagged with a tracker in mid-July on Casey Key, Cecil most recently pinged in the Indian River Lagoon, south of Kennedy Space Center on Florida’s east coast. Follow Cecil and seven other turtles on Mote.org.
Brynn Mechem
A deal brokered this week means the Sarasota YMCA’s two fitness branches will remain open past Sept. 13, the date originally announced as their final day of operation.
A+E
Teen digs helping sea turtles
Turtle Tracks AS OF AUG. 17 TOTAL NESTS: 2019 2018 Lido Beach 98 123 Siesta Key 712 359 Casey Key 2,309 1,185
City teams up with student to keep plastic off the beach. PAGE 17
TOTAL FALSE CRAWLS: 2019 2018 Lido Beach 192 144 Siesta Key 1,157 325 Casey Key 2,982 1,430 Source: Mote Marine Laboratory
PAGE 4
Courtesy photo
Caleb Jameson sets up one of his boxes on Lido Beach.
This mic is no joke. INSIDE