The two-term commissioner seeks another re-election.
By Noah Bookstein
Original Air Date: June 5, 2026
Host: Jen Ahearn-Koch wants to be re-elected—again—as Sarasota City Commissioner. Noah Bookstein brings you a profile of the two-term commissioner.
Noah Bookstein: Jen Ahearn-Koch first ran and was elected to the city commission in 2017, and she won re-election in 2022. Now she is running again.
Ahern’s involvement in local politics started with her local Tahiti Park Neighborhood Association, which she helped create.
Jen Ahearn-Koch
Jen Ahearn-Koch: We didn’t have a neighborhood association, and our neighborhood was being threatened with development on our borders. We didn’t know what to do. We decided that the best thing to do was strength in numbers. So we formed a neighborhood association, my neighbor Paula and I.
I tried to attend the neighborhood association meetings because I was the neighborhood president and really felt special when a city commissioner or somebody from the city was there because they were taking their time to hear my little neighborhood’s issues.
NB: Her favorite part of Sarasota is our engaged citizenry.
JAK: I can tell you, there are some cities in Florida where nobody shows up at any commission meeting. I can’t imagine that. That would make me really sad. I love that our citizens come out and are engaged in our community. I love that we have the neighborhood associations. I love that our community is involved and cares. Some people say to me, “Oh my gosh, all these people complaining all the time.” I don’t see it like that. I see it as people being engaged. I see it as people caring. I see it as people wanting to be part of driving the way we are going to grow.
NB: Ahearn’s unique education in Paris and New York City and her experiences as part of the planning board inform her diligent approach to local government and the issues that come before the commission.
Jen Ahearn-Koch during a City Commission meeting.
JAK: I do try to leave no stone unturned. I will go to all the meetings leading up to an application, and I will read all of the information as the application goes through the whole process. I try to garner all the information I can from my own perspective and from their perspective, put it together, and I use that to base my decisions upon. Not just one angle but as many angles as I can.
NB: Being a graphic designer, she gave an arts analogy to explain her thought process.
JAK: There’s an art exhibition, and it was in the middle of a room, and you could enter the room—well, not any room, of course, but it was a room with four entry ways. So, when you entered from, let’s say, the east side, you approach the sculpture, and you saw one side of it, and you went, “Wow, look at that!” And it’s a sculpture of a man. And then you go out, you go into the east entrance, and lo and behold, it’s really a woman. You go out, you go in the north, and you say, “Oh no, it’s not that; it’s a building.” And then you go to the south entrance, and it was something else. Those are the way issues are. They have many, many, many angles—not just four, in my example. Citizens bring us these issues, or developers bring us their applications, or neighborhood associations bring us—and in order to really understand it, especially solutions and compromises, you have to have a full picture.
NB: In considering development, Ahearn remembers when Sarasota was a small fishing village. She understands that it’s growing, but she wants to make sure Sarasota retains its unique characteristics, including in the arts, architecture, fishing and agriculture.
JAK: All of these things make Sarasota who we are. We don’t have to stay the way we always are to be who we are—we can grow—but as long as we incorporate that which is essential to us and who we are, we will stay who we are.
NB: Ahearn really values walkability, and during the cooler months, she often walks home from City Hall.
Ronnie Phelps, Jen Ahearn-Koch and Flo Entler
JAK: Having lived in Paris and New York City—I didn’t have a car in New York City, but we did have a car in Paris—you don’t take your car six blocks because you walk that six blocks. You just don’t in a big city. Are we there? I don’t think so.
NB: Walkability and balance downtown are some of her priorities.
JAK: A downtown has to be a balanced place, right? It has to be a place where people want to live and where people want to shop, they want to go, they want to walk around, they want to sit in the shade. If it’s tilted too far one way, it’s not really going to work. There are small coffee shops, right? You’re not going to go and buy a $5 cup of coffee and sit there with your paper—look at me being old fashioned with paper—on your phone, then, if you’re reading it there—and have your cafe latte for a half an hour, 45 minutes downtown, sitting outside under the shade tree—you’re not going to do that if you have to pay $3.50 to park.
NB: Ahearn also thinks free parking at the beach should be preserved.
JAK: The beaches are one of the last havens for the “everyman,” “everywoman” to load the kids and the beach chairs and the toys and the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in the car on the weekend, drive to the beach, park for free, go to the beach for free, enjoy a day for free with your family or without. This expansion along Benjamin Franklin did not make me happy—I did not vote for it—but it’s a creep into paid beach parking. Not at all going to support that. We have to remember that Sarasota has to be a place for everybody of all levels, and privatizing some of the best parts of Sarasota is not an option.
NB: Ahearn believes the citizens should have more say in the development process, and she is critical of administrative review.
Jen Ahearn-Koch. | Photo courtesy of City of Sarasota
JAK: The city needs to reintroduce the public’s voice into the approval process. We have a process now for all of our downtown: administrative-only approval. Administrative approval process is invaluable. Our very qualified staff must do their job, and they do their job, and they do it well. What needs to be introduced is the community’s voice in that process so that citizens are able to participate in the government and in the city where they live and how their community grows. If they don’t, growth becomes an administrative-only function that excludes the community, and that is not responsible government. We need to re-look at this and figure out what makes sense. When does it make sense for the community to participate? Not only a community workshop but a planning board hearing and a city commission meeting. Because at the end of the day, you want to look at your elected officials and say, “Why did you vote yes?” or “Why did you vote no on that?” and with administrative-only approval, I have to look at them and say, “You didn’t participate, and I didn’t participate.”
NB: Ahearn thinks Sarasota needs more affordable housing but criticizes the current metrics as not being truly affordable.
JAK: $120,000 area median income is not affordable housing. $100,000 area median income is not affordable housing. Affordable housing needs to be for folks who are struggling—who are families, individuals, students freshly out of school—20s, 30s, 40s, 80s, all ages—but those folks who are not making six figures. That’s not affordable housing. We do not need to be subsidizing folks making six figures. We do need to help folks who are struggling. I went around to the other end of the table, and I petitioned our commissioners to please, please consider changing the metrics. If you get the density bonus, I would love to change that to $80,000, $60,000, $40,000. Those are real levels of need.
NB: Ahearn thinks that the city needs to take steps to protect parks from being developed, such as placing them in their own district and eventually their own zones.
Jen Ahearn-Koch (left) and Mark Smith (center) on Talk of the Town with Carrie Seidman (right)
JAK: Parks should be considered infrastructure. Often, people think of parks as extras. They’re not extras. They are infrastructure. They contribute massively to people’s mental health, they contribute to our property values, they contribute to our quality of life, they contribute to our children’s sense of place and who we are, and they’re also a utility for storm water.
NB: Storm water is an issue that Ahearn has quite a bit of personal experience with, as her own house flooded during Hurricane Helene.
JAK: I never imagined we’d flood, but if we were going to, that was not the one I thought was going to do it. I actually was not worried at all about Helene, and lo and behold, 8:00 at night we started flooding. It was the combination of the amount of rain coming down, the broken storm water system and sea level rise and storm surge, and it was a really frightening experience. Everything that is not metal or solid wood absorbs the water. You have baby books; you have your grandmother’s things. Any of that stuff. My portfolio. I’m a graphic designer, and most of my portfolio from Paris, I’d throw away. Life goes on, right? My life as a city commissioner had to go on. We had commission meetings.
NB: On the bright side. It really helped her understand how the community can come together.
JAK: I remember feeling this sense of profound value in community that I had never felt before.
NB: During these especially challenging times, Jen Ahearn-Koch believes her experience and relationships from previous terms are valuable.
JAK: I’ve read the codes, I know the staff, I know the neighborhood associations and the groups, I know all the government entities that we have to work with, and there are limitations, and I understand it. I hope citizens will recognize that I work very hard and I have worked very hard and I will continue to work very hard to represent them at the city commission.
I do hope that this election gets the attention it needs because local government impacts the residents more than any other level of government, and the residents need to know: If they’re turned off by what’s going on at any other level of government, get your ballot, go to the bottom of it, vote for your city commissioners, and then go home.
NB: The initial election on August 18 will shrink the field from multiple candidates to only three. In November, the voters will pick the final two candidates to represent them on at-large seats on the Sarasota City Commission.
For WSLR News, Noah Bookstein.
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