Smart-development activists are unfamiliar with Shaun Libou and Ryan Murphy, but express cautious optimism.
By Brice Claypoole
Original Air Date: September 19, 2025
Host: The Sarasota County Planning Commission is an advisory committee to the county commission. The all-volunteer board reviews upcoming land-use projects and comprehensive plan amendments. Their recommendations then go to the county commission, which makes the final decisions. For years, some advocates have considered the board a rubber-stamp for developers. Recent appointments, however, have sparked cautious optimism that dynamic is weakening. Brice Claypoole reports.
Brice Claypoole: It started in April, when the county commission appointed Jon Thaxton to a four-year term on the planning board. Thaxton served on the county commission from 2000 to 2012 after serving on the planning commission in the 1990s. He is a vocal advocate for affordable housing and conservation who has been critical of county planning. Last summer, he called the county’s 2050 plan, which he supported as a commissioner, a “broken promise.”
Jon Thaxton
Jon Thaxton: If you go back and look at the 2050 commitments today, it reads like a tale of broken promises. The requirements for compact, walkable, non-gated, new urbanist communities with multiple integrated housing, including a mandate for affordable housing, are now gone. They’re just gone. And they’re replaced with the same old suburban sprawl that we’ve seen all along.
BC: Thaxton’s appointment was a sharp break from previous ones and received widespread support from Sarasota’s smart-growth advocates. Lourdes Ramirez, a Siesta Key resident and vocal opponent of overdevelopment, praised Thaxton:
Lourdes Ramirez: He’s not in the pockets of developers, but he can communicate with the developers. Not that I agree with every decision he makes, but I largely believe that he understands that Sarasota County needs protections and we can’t have overdevelopment. I think he can be fair. At the same time, I believe he leans towards the protection of neighborhoods and especially the protection of the environment and the wildlife.
BC: In late August, the commissioners made two more appointments to the planning commission: Shaun Libou and Ryan Murphy.
Shaun Libou
Libou is a director of real estate investment banking for Raymond James & Associates. In his application to the planning commission, he writes that the most pressing issues for the community are “responsibly managing the county’s growth while preserving the way of life that makes Sarasota beautiful” and “preparing the county for more severe and regular meteorological events such as powerful hurricanes and flooding.”
Ryan Murphy
Ryan Murphy is a lead associate at digital information firm Booz Allen Hamilton who served in local government roles from 2010 to 2022 and sits on the Citizen Tax Oversight Committee. He writes that his goal on the board is to “support this community” and that “rapid and continued growth is the most pressing planning and land use challenge in Sarasota County. We have to strive as a community to grow responsibly.”
Libou did not respond to a request for comment, and Murphy was unavailable.
None of the activists I spoke with knew the board members. Ramirez said many are uncertain and hope the two will earn trust.
LR: When people like those two new ones come out of the blue—two people who have not been very active in the community, who have not been well known in the community—there begins a level of distrust, since people getting on the planning commission are usually picked by developers.
BC: One of the applicants who wasn’t selected at the August meeting was Old Miakka advocate Becky Ayech.
Becky Ayech
Becky Ayech: I used to be a planning commissioner probably 40 years ago. I got kicked off because the developers didn’t like me. From time to time since then, I’ve reapplied. The reason is that I believe I can bring a plethora of knowledge and institutional memory into the decision-making process.
BC: She says she hopes Murphy and Libou will be effective on the board but that it’s ultimately up to the public to hold them accountable. She says the most important thing is for people to engage with the commission.
BA: People get frustrated because they say the commission’s bought off, they always vote for developers. I will say this: the problem is also that people are lazy, and they won’t do their homework, and they won’t find out what the commission is going to have to consider by law and then provide facts that support the commission’s ability to deny something. I hope that’s a rallying cry for people to become involved so that they’ll have the outcome that they want.
BC: For WSLR News, this is Brice Claypoole.
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