Council to explore new resiliency initiatives

St. Petersburg City Council Vice-Chair Richie Floyd believes there is an opportunity to build on past and current resiliency efforts. 

At its July 23 meeting, the Council approved two new business items to further explore creating a comprehensive citywide resiliency plan and a citizen-led Resiliency Advisory Board. Floyd submitted the requests. 

Floyd explained to the Catalyst that the ideas stemmed from conversations with community members. “We talked about what their concerns were with how we’re doing our infrastructure planning long-term.” 

He said that the St. Petersburg government has supported a variety of initiatives, including the Resilient St. Pete Action Plan and the St. Pete Water Plan, which incorporates the Stormwater Master Plan.  

“We should have one overarching umbrella that coalesces all of that information,” Floyd believes, “and then make sure that it encompasses a number of things beyond infrastructure and storm resiliency. Those could include environmental concerns, land use and planning and development as a whole.”

At the July 23 meeting, Council member Brandi Gabbard emphasized the importance of the work the City has done so far. 

“The Resilient St. Pete Action Plan was a plan that was resident driven,” she said. “It was done across nine neighborhoods across the city and not just in the coastal neighborhoods.”

A partnership with the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council, city staff and consultants worked with residents in a pilot project “to better understand local flooding challenges and identify meaningful solutions,” according to the City’s website.

Gabbard said that the communities that participated were Bartlett Park, Harbordale, Bonita Bayou, Coquina Key, Childs Park, Shore Acres, Riviera Bay, Kingston Street and Old Pasadena. These neighborhoods were selected because they not only had flooding challenges, but the St. Petersburg government wanted to take a “citywide approach to this issue.” She believes the initiative is a “framework for a citywide resiliency plan.” 

“Like all studies that we do and everything that we do, it’s important that our residents see that those investments go to action,” she added. The goal is to create something that does not just “sit on a shelf.” 

“The citizen-led Resiliency Advisory Board could make sure that we have a constant place to look for public input on how we move forward on infrastructure resiliency planning,” Floyd said. “The City has a proven model, which is our citizen-led advisory committees.” 

While it is still too early to determine all of the specifics, he added that board members could discuss the city’s tree canopy and heat protection efforts. 

“I think the overarching theme for these ideas was as we go into having more conversations about resiliency and infrastructure in the future, we want to try to ensure citizens that we are doing everything we can to do things in a sensible, transparent and democratic manner,” Floyd said. “This brings them into the process.” 

With the approval, both of the business items will be brought to the Health, Energy, Resilience & Sustainability Committee. He explained that there is a financial element to consider. This may impact when or if these recommendations are brought to fruition. 

For example, Floyd said that creating a citizen-led advisory board “is just something we have to stand up and doesn’t have a huge fiscal impact.” However, a comprehensive plan “may not have the fiscal impact that a plan from scratch would have, because we would build on a lot of things, but it would have a fiscal impact so we would have to have further discussions about funding and what not.”