Sarasota SpeaX steps away from its usual format this week for a roundtable built around a different kind of urgency. Hurricanes Helene and Milton left families and businesses across the region still working through recovery as this episode airs, and the hosts bring in three people with very different vantage points on how the community weathered it.
Sarasota Commissioner from District 3 and former Mayor Erik Arroyo speaks to the storms from a governmental perspective, walking through what preparation and response looked like at the city level. Melissa Bordes of Capo Pazzo Pizzeria offers the small business owner's account, the version of a hurricane story that involves protecting a livelihood along with a home. Sarasota Police Chief Rex Troche rounds out the panel with the public safety view, describing what coordination and cleanup looked like from his department's side.
The conversation moves through the practical stages of a storm: what preparation looked like before Helene and Milton made landfall, how each guest's world changed in the immediate aftermath, and what post-storm cleanup has actually involved in the weeks since. It's less a highlight reel and more an honest accounting of a hard stretch for Sarasota.
Different Vantage Points, One Community
What ties the three guests together is the same city and the same two storms, seen from a commissioner's office, a pizzeria kitchen, and a police department. Rather than the usual roundabout question or Rapid Fire Gauntlet, the hosts let the roundtable format carry the full episode.
Each guest brings a distinct kind of detail to the table. Arroyo speaks to the coordination required across city departments before a storm even makes landfall, decisions about shelters, resources and communication that most residents never see. Bordes describes the anxiety of watching a business she's built weather uncertain conditions, and the choices small business owners have to make about boarding up, staffing, and reopening once the immediate danger passes. Troche discusses what his department's post-storm priorities looked like, from checking on vulnerable residents to managing the logistics of a city trying to get back to normal.
It's a departure from the show's typical single-guest structure, but one that fits the moment: Sarasota SpeaX pausing its regular format to let the community hear directly from people who lived through Helene and Milton alongside them.
What you'll take away
- The episode is a special roundtable departing from the show's usual single-guest format, with no roundabout question or Rapid Fire segment
- Erik Arroyo, Sarasota Commissioner for District 3 and former Mayor, discusses the city's hurricane preparation and response
- Melissa Bordes of Capo Pazzo Pizzeria shares a small business owner's firsthand account of the storms
- Sarasota Police Chief Rex Troche discusses public safety coordination during and after Helene and Milton