Why Sarasota's Vote to Bury Power Lines Changes the Math on Lido Key

A buyer walked a Lido Shores listing last month with her agent, the kind of house with a seawall and a dock and a price tag that made the utility pole in the side yard feel almost beside the point. Then the agent mentioned it. Not the pole itself, but what's coming for it. Sarasota just voted to take it down, and take down every pole like it between St. Armands Circle and the far end of Lido Key. The buyer's next question was the obvious one: what does that cost me?

Nobody could answer her yet. That's the part worth understanding before you write an offer on this stretch of coastline, because the gap between "the city voted" and "here's your bill" is where the real decision-making happens.

What the City Actually Voted For on July 20

On July 20, 2026, the Sarasota City Commission voted 5-0, twice, to move a long-discussed utility undergrounding project from talk to contract. The first vote approved a $7.95 million professional services agreement with Utility Consultants of Florida, a Largo-based firm that beat out Kimley-Horn and Bowman Consulting for the work. The second adopted Resolution 26R-3408, authorizing an $8 million tax-exempt line of credit with Regions Capital Advantage to front the money until special assessments can pay it back.

That structure matters. The city isn't paying for this out of its general fund. It's fronting the cash and planning to recover it from the property owners on St. Armands and Lido Key who would benefit, through a special assessment district. If the district never forms, the city remains on the hook for the $3.17 million already committed to the work. The commission took that risk on the strength of survey numbers gathered the previous fall: 87 percent support from the St. Armands Residents Association, 93 percent from the Lido Key Residents Association, and 97 percent from the Lido Shores Property Owners Association.

The Timeline That Matters More Than the Vote

The vote itself is less useful to a buyer than the schedule behind it, because the schedule tells you exactly how much is still unknown.

• Summer through fall 2026: the consultant team develops cost estimates and district boundaries and stands up a public engagement microsite.
• Winter 2026-2027: the city presents parcel-level assessment estimates and begins the process of gathering property owner votes.
• Spring through fall 2027: statutory resolutions, public hearings, and bond financing get finalized, with a target of first billing in November 2027 if the districts are approved.
• Once implementation begins, Sarasota's Public Works Director has estimated three to four years to substantially complete the work and up to seven years to finish every phase.

Here's the friction that matters for a transaction happening today. If you close on a home on Lido Key or St. Armands before winter 2026-2027, you are buying ahead of the number. Residents have floated a working estimate of roughly $10,000 per property spread over 20 years, based on conversations at association meetings, but that figure isn't the parcel-specific assessment the city will eventually publish. A buyer closing after the parcel estimates come out is working with a disclosed number. A buyer closing now is working with an educated guess.

Longboat Key Already Ran This Experiment

Sarasota didn't invent this playbook. The neighboring Town of Longboat Key recently completed burying its own power lines after nearly a decade of work, at a total cost of around $43 million. Property owners there ended up paying an average of $4,200 over 30 years in assessments.

That comparison table is the closest thing available to a real-world preview of what Lido and St. Armands property owners might eventually see. The per-property numbers aren't directly comparable across projects of different scope and duration, but the structure is identical: a barrier island community votes to tax itself to remove overhead lines, and pays it off over decades.

Part of why the city is moving carefully is that this isn't the only underground work happening on the same streets. Commissioner Ahearn-Koch pushed staff to coordinate the utility burial with separate St. Armands drainage improvements advancing through Sarasota County, funded in part by a new state appropriation through the Florida Department of Transportation.

"I want to make sure we're not digging up, filling in and digging up again."

That's not a small concern for anyone touring homes on these streets over the next few years. Construction disruption is easier to plan around when it happens once instead of twice.

Why the Assessment Might Be a Rounding Error

The undergrounding push didn't start as a real estate story. It started as a resiliency story. In 2024, six separate weather events flooded the barrier islands, capped by Hurricanes Helene and Milton, which left parts of Lido and St. Armands without power for extended stretches. Sarasota's Public Works Director put it plainly when a commissioner pressed him on how long residents went dark.

"I'd say about a week, some about a month, roughly," he said.

But there's an economic argument sitting underneath the resiliency argument, and it's the one that should change how a buyer thinks about the cost. Real estate research consistently finds that homes near visible overhead power lines sell at discounts of 2 to 10 percent compared to similar homes without them. One of the more rigorous hedonic studies on the subject, conducted on neighborhoods in Canberra, Australia, found that burying utility lines added about 2.9 percent to home sale prices, with utility-sponsored estimates running as high as 10 percent.

On a barrier island where a modest home starts at seven figures, even the low end of that range dwarfs a $10,000 assessment spread over 20 years. If the hedonic research holds anywhere near true for Lido Key and St. Armands, the assessment isn't really a cost. It's closer to an investment with the return already priced into what comparable undergrounded barrier islands, like Longboat Key next door, tend to command.

What This Means If You're Touring Lido or St. Armands Right Now

A few things worth asking before you get emotionally attached to a specific address:

• Which association covers this parcel. Support percentages varied by group in last fall's survey, and that history tends to predict how smoothly the eventual vote goes in each pocket of the island.
• Whether the seller or listing agent has any documentation from HOA or POA meetings referencing the undergrounding project, even informally.
• What the closing timeline looks like relative to winter 2026-2027, when parcel-level estimates are expected. A spring 2027 closing could land right as real numbers become public.
• Whether the property is also inside the separate St. Armands drainage improvement footprint, since overlapping construction windows affect more than the utility poles.

None of this should scare a buyer off the islands. It should change what you ask for, and when. A newly disclosed special assessment is a normal part of Florida barrier island ownership, not a red flag, provided you understand the number and the timeline before you're the one holding the bill.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does this apply to condo owners too, or just single-family homes? The special assessment districts under discussion cover the geography, St. Armands Circle, the St. Armands residential streets, and all of Lido Key including Lido Shores, City Island's Ken Thompson Park, and Ted Sperling Park, not a specific property type. Condo owners inside those boundaries would be assessed the same way single-family owners are, separate from any building-level assessments their association already carries for reserves or milestone inspections.

Is this connected to Florida Power and Light's statewide undergrounding surcharge? No. This is a locally initiated, resident-requested project funded through a city special assessment district. FPL's Storm Secure Underground Program is a separate statewide effort funded through a small monthly surcharge on all FPL customer bills, and FPL is running its own undergrounding work elsewhere in the City of Sarasota under that program.

When will I actually know what my property owes? Not before winter 2026-2027 at the earliest, when the consultant team is expected to bring parcel-level assessment estimates back to the city. Property owner approval and a City Commission vote would follow before any assessment becomes final.

If you're weighing a purchase on Lido Key or St. Armands and want to talk through how a project like this factors into timing, financing, or your offer strategy, Jeanne Egan walks Sarasota-area buyers and sellers through exactly this kind of decision every day. Let's Connect.