Saturday April 12, 2008
8 am - 11:30am
Manatee Community College
Lakewood Ranch
7131 Professional Parkway East
Sarasota, FL 34240

Every neighborhood has its own unique characteristics, those things that make it a special community where you can raise a family. While neighborhoods can differ in many ways including size, demographics, amenities, infrastructure, etc., the common denominator is that each contains residents who care about what goes on in their neighborhood. The Manasota Regional Neighborhoods Summit will show residents of vastly different neighborhoods how they can combine their resources, strengths and abilities to achieve a common goal; to make their neighborhood a better place to live.

Keynote Speaker:
Matt Leighninger is the Executive director of the Deliberative Democracy Consortium, an umbrella group that includes the major organizations in the field of deliberation and citizen involvement. Over the last twelve years, Matt has worked with Citizen Involvement efforts in over 100 communities, in 40 states and two Canadian provinces; roughly 25,000 people have taken part in those projects. Most of this work was supported by Everyday Democracy (formerly the Study Circles Resources Center), of which he is a Senior Associate. Mr. Leighninger has also been a consultant to the National League of Cities, NeighborWorks America, Center for Disease Control, and the League of Women Voters. His first Book, The Next Form of Democracy; How Expert Rule is Giving Way to Shared Governance – and Why Politics Will Never Be the Same, was released in 2006 by Vanderbilt University Press.

-- What a cool event --

The Sarasota Audubon Society is gearing up to count local bird species and individual birds in one big day of birding. The 106th Christmas Bird Count is Saturday, December 17, 2005. This national event first started in 1900 when ornithologist Frank Chapman, an early officer in the National Audubon Society, proposed a census that would count birds during the holidays rather than hunt them as was the tradition.

In Sarasota, the count has been crafted into a fine art. The radius of the count circle is 7.5 miles, with an epicenter at Bee Ridge and Beneva Roads. In the week before the count, several Sarasota Auduboners travel the circle to scout the birds that are present in the area. If a rare or unexpected bird is seen, the team leader is alerted to look for that specific bird on count day.

On December 17, fifteen teams of 4-5 people each will venture out from dawn until dusk to search for and document birds. Two experienced birders who know where certain species can be spotted will serve as roving counters. At least one participant will rise at 2 a.m. to search for local owl species. Data including the number of species counted, the number of individual birds sighted, the number of hours spent in the field and weather conditions is submitted to the National Audubon Society. Along with more than 2,000 count circles around the U.S. and Canada, the data is used by scientific groups to get an overview of changing habitat and migration patterns.

Last year's Christmas Bird Count in Sarasota included 60 people in 15 teams and many people calling in sightings from backyards. A record 151 species for the circle were counted, placing the Sarasota Audubon Society in eighth place (out of 62) for Florida and eighty-second (out of 2,002) in the US and Canada. 27,630 birds in all were counted locally by the Sarasota Audubon Society.

For information on last year's bird count results log onto www.sarasotaaudubon.org.
Data from this year's bird count will be available by the end of the year.

For more information, contact Jeanne Dubi at 355-1709.