There is a state response. Tallahassee has spent five sessions pretending there isn't.
Downtown St. Petersburg sits between Tampa Bay and a county whose municipal seawall is on average 47 years old. The 2024 King-tide events flooded First Avenue. The 2025 floods reached the courthouse. The state-level resilience response remains theoretical. Residents have stopped waiting; the State Senate needs to stop waiting too.
Pinellas seawall and stormwater remediation is a 20-year project. One-year line items in a budget are not a strategy. A statutorily-required 5-year resilience appropriation, set in the next session, gives municipalities a budget they can actually plan against.
The 2022 Surfside reforms forced legitimate structural assessments that no working-class condo owner can pay in 24 months. Create a state-backed loan program with a 30-year amortization for unit owners under area median income. Saves the elderly residents who built the buildings.
Any state-level economic-development support for a new Tropicana site is conditioned on a binding community-benefits agreement: prevailing wage, affordable-housing replacement, neighborhood right-of-return for the Gas Plant District descendants. The State Senate writes the appropriation; the State Senate writes the conditions.
“My grandmother bought our unit in 1991. The 2024 special assessment was $58,000. I am her caregiver. We do not have it. The state knows we do not have it.
“Maya has spent six years suing insurance companies that deny coverage to people like my neighbors. She knows the law. She knows the people. That combination is rare.
Downtown St. Petersburg residents: request your vote-by-mail ballot now. Volunteer for the Pinellas canvass. Pick one.
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