About this project

Barbara Peters Smith (Photo by  Rachel O’Hara)
Allen Parsons (Courtesy photo), Tamara Schells (Herald-Tribune staff photo / Dan Wagner)

“Catching Our Drift” began as a conversation between Herald-Tribune reporter Barbara Peters Smith and two Sarasota County staffers: planning manager Allen Parsons and demographer Tamara Schells. Smith has covered aging for the last seven years, and her time on the paper’s editorial board inspired her interest in civic affairs. Parsons and Schells agreed to act as contributors to this statistical portrait of who we are now as a community, eight years after the Great Recession, and who we might become in 30 years — unless our collective political will brings about a change of course.

Herald-Tribune design editor Jennifer Borresen created the graphic presentation, based mostly on Schells’ research, and web developer Dak Le produced the interactive quiz, “Sarasota County: Where do you fit in?”

Please email us your thoughts: barbara.smith@heraldtribune.com