Welch Says Being Mayor Has Made Being Mayor More Difficult Than Expected

ST. PETERSBURG — Mayor Ken Welch says his first term in office was complicated by a series of unforeseeable events that made governing St. Petersburg considerably more difficult than anticipated.

Speaking after Tuesday’s election, Welch pointed to hurricanes, the collapse of the Tampa Bay Rays stadium deal and an increasingly political environment among the challenges his administration has faced.

Political analyst Graham Whitmore says the difficulties facing Welch were impossible to anticipate when he took office.

“Mayor Welch had no reasonable way of knowing that hurricanes would become an issue in Florida,” Whitmore said. “It’s very easy to Monday morning quarterback and say the administration should have been prepared, but hindsight is always 20/20.”

Whitmore says the same is true of the Rays, noting that there was little reason to believe negotiations involving professional baseball, hundreds of millions of dollars in public funding and some of the most valuable real estate in St. Petersburg could become contentious.

Other challenges have emerged more recently.

The city’s growing network of Flock Safety cameras has drawn criticism from residents concerned about privacy and government surveillance, another development Whitmore said officials could not possibly have anticipated.

“Nobody could have predicted that putting license plate readers throughout residential neighborhoods would make some residents uncomfortable,” he said. “These are the kinds of completely unexpected situations every administration eventually encounters.”

Welch has also lamented the increasingly political nature of government, something Whitmore described as particularly unfortunate.

“When you run for mayor of a large city, you don’t expect politics to become involved,” he said.

Whitmore cautioned voters against judging Welch’s first term based solely on events that occurred during his first term.

“It’s very easy to criticize the mayor for how he handled these things after they’ve happened,” Whitmore said. “At the time, many of these things hadn’t happened yet.”

Whitmore remains optimistic about a second Welch term.

“If voters give Mayor Welch another four years, there’s every reason to believe things could go much more smoothly,” Whitmore said. “A lot will depend on what happens.”