- [Narrator] This is a production of WEDU PBS, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Sarasota.

- [Rob] Coming up next, St. Petersburg voters will elect a new mayor on November 2nd.

The future of baseball, gun-related crime, and affordable housing are among the big issues facing the contenders.

We'll have a conversation with the candidates, Ken Welch and Robert Blackmon next on Florida This Week.

(serious theme music) Welcome back, St. Petersburg voters will select a new mayor in less than five weeks, mail-in voting has already begun, election day is November 2nd.

Two candidates for mayor are on the ballot, City Council member, Robert Blackmon, and former Pinellas County Commissioner, Ken Welch.

Robert Blackmon was born and raised in St. Petersburg.

He graduated from St. Pete high and earned his degree from Florida State University.

He works in real estate with a focus on restoring and managing multi-family apartments and condos.

He's been a representative on the Council of Neighborhood Associations, he's currently a member of the St. Petersburg City Council, representing District One.

Ken Welch grew up in the Gas Plant area of St. Petersburg, he has a BA from USF St. Pete, and an MBA from Florida A&M.

Ken is an accountant and worked for Florida Power, he's also served as technology manager for his family's accounting firm.

He served as a Pinellas County Commissioner in District Seven from 2000 to 2020.

He and his wife, Donna, have two daughters.

And joining me now are the two candidates, this'll be a conversation, and we've flipped a coin ahead of time, and Ken Welch will go first.

And welcome to the program, great to see you.

- Good to be here, Rob.

- Absolute pleasure.

- So, Ken, I wanna ask you, the Rays Stadium lease runs out after the 2027 season, they were going to hang a banner in the stadium promoting the split season with Montreal during the upcoming playoffs, there was pushback from fans, they decided against hanging the banner, but I wanna ask you, what do you think of the Rays splitting their regular season between St. Pete and Montreal with the Rays spending just a little more than two months in St. Pete and almost four months in Montreal?

- Rob, good to be with you.

Good to be with you again, Robert.

You know, I've been a strong supporter of the Rays as a County Commissioner, led the effort to increase our bed tax so we'd have an extra penny to fund a new Rays Stadium.

As you know, the previous penny funded more than a $100 million for Tropicana Field's debt service.

I think the rollout of the split season idea could have been done better.

The local community could have had more of a heads up about that coming.

But to me, after we got past that gut punch and the ego issue, I think it addresses some key issues.

Number one, we do have an attendance problem.

The Rays put a great product on the field, and we're still almost at the bottom of the league in attendance.

We also, I believe, need to look at what we do well, and that is spring training.

And so after they announced that I went back and talked to our Tourist Development Council of members, and I served as one of those as chairman of the County Commission.

And they got real good feedback, they liked the sister city relationship we have with the Phillies and the City of Clearwater with Dunedin and the Blue Jays.

It does give us year-round benefits as those teams have rehab and minor league at those facilities.

And so the economic benefit is there, and this would be spring training almost on steroids.

And so I would love for that, the first option, to be a full-time team here, but we've had a problem for a long time, Rays have had a winning product on the field, and a new stadium doesn't necessarily cure the problem.

One of the teams that we are ahead of is the Marlins, and they have a new, almost billion dollar stadium.

So it just can't be a new stadium, you have to look at all the fact.

- [Rob] All right, Robert Blackmon, what do you think of the split season idea?

- When it comes to the split season, you know, what I've said from day one is, "The responsibility of a municipal government is to get civic value."

So we need to get value for our taxpayers and our citizens to benefit the entire city.

You know, we don't control the Rays, neither Ken, nor I, and that's a private entity.

We need to see what value we can get and extract from this deal.

So if they're comfortable doing split season, they can certainly explore that.

And I would be open to that because St. Pete is increasingly becoming an international city, we see the Dali Museum, the Grand Prix, and we could partner this with Montreal to further expand our international presence.

But the real value here is the right to redevelop the Tropicana Field site before 2027 when the lease expires.

We for years talked about how we had an ironclad lease binding the Rays to the site, but the knife cuts both ways, they also have rights to that site through 2027.

And if we can get value for our citizens now and the redevelopment opportunity, I'm certainly willing to hear that because you have Al Lang Field, which the Rays also have rights to where they could own the Rowdies Soccer Team.

If we can combine the Rowdies and the Rays into a single stadium, we get that value of the 11 acres at Al Lang back, while at the same time, getting the rest of the 86 acres at Tropicana Field for exciting redevelopments like hotels, affordable housing, market-rate housing, and also hopefully, office towers, because there's been no downtown office tower built in my lifetime.

1986 was the last time we had an office tower built in downtown St. Pete.

And we need to be looking at business relocation.

- [Rob] It sounds like both of you like this idea of the split season, but for those taxpayers out there that say, "Look, two months, or two months and a week or so is not very much of a season for baseball."

Why should taxpayers at all put up money for a stadium that could cost more than a 1/2 a billion dollars?

- Well, first of all, the cost has to make sense for the citizens of St. Pete and Pinellas County.

You know, Pinellas County has to be a partner in this happening, and I'm elated to have five county commissioners who've endorsed my campaign, so that's very important.

But the Rays have to bring substantial resources to the table as well.

And one of the benefits of a split season is you don't have to have a dome, that substantially reduces the cost of the new stadium.

But for me, this is personal, it goes beyond just baseball.

As you said, I was a child at the Gas Plant, I've had family businesses and our church relocated in the pursuit of baseball and I-175.

And so this is a 35 year promise of jobs, economic development, that now we have an opportunity to make that come to fruition.

The Rays really is a secondary priority, and that Rays also need to determine, as you well know, what side of the bay they wanna be on, and then we can move forward and come to an agreement.

- Because there is some talk about moving to Hillsborough County.

Robert, what would you say though, to the folks that are skeptical, excuse me, about using tax dollars and getting only two months of the regular season at this new stadium?

- To be very clear, I do not support general fund dollars for the construction of a new stadium.

What happened in Miami was a debacle, and we need to make sure we get our civic value again, but that plays into dollars and cents absolutely.

Bed tax dollars, we can certainly use, we've already pledged money for infrastructure improvements, but we need to do those infrastructure improvements one way or the other, you know?

Reintegrating the grid system, putting pipes down.

There's basic things we need to do as a government one way or the other with, or without the Rays.

But when it comes to the value of that, I do not support putting general fund dollars towards the new stadium, and the Rays are comfortable with that from my negotiations and talks with them.

- [Rob] Robert Blackmon, let me ask you about gun violence in the city of this year.

The city is on track to exceeding last year's murder rate in St. Pete.

At the current rate by year's end, death toll will far exceed the highest record in the last two decades, that was 30 in 2005.

What would you do as mayor to reduce gun violence?

- [Robert] So I was elected to the council in 2019, and since I've been elected, I've fought constantly for public safety, it's been one of my biggest issues, but again, it's one of the biggest issues of any mayor municipal government.

What I've done is I've tried to fight for a new fire station to give our first responders the needs... meet their needs when they need them.

Also, I've pushed for increasing our sworn officer number to 600, we've achieved that this budget year.

So making sure we have officers on the street, but also giving kids opportunities so that they do not turn to a life of crime in the first place.

You know, why are people committing crimes?

It's out of desperation.

And to that end, I've pushed for and just achieved, we're saving the Science Center in west St. Pete, which will be a center of scientific learning, which can teach kids how to get good paying jobs, end generational poverty and stop them from going into a life of crime, because they'll have something to do and ways to occupy their time to make money for their families.

- Ken Welch, what is the answer to the rising number of murders in St. Pete?

- There's no single answer.

It has to be all hands on deck.

So I've worked closely with law enforcement throughout my time as a county commissioner, I'm endorsed by Sheriff Gualtieri and Sheriff Coats who served before him.

But law enforcement will tell you, "You can't arrest your way out of this problem.

Just putting more police on the street does not solve this problem."

And so one of the things I did as a commissioner was help create the first community redevelopment areas, CRA, targeting poverty.

And so there's funding, annual funding, for the next 25 years, it was about five or $6 million last year, that we can target towards jobs, towards education, towards housing in that community.

And I also want to emphasize the youth component.

You know, you mentioned the murders, after the 13th murder this year, I called a youth summit at a undisclosed location because of the snitch issue.

We had leaders from the faith community, we had young people, we had Esther Eugene, the president of the NAACP.

And a round table, and we asked the young people, "What is happening, where are the guns coming from, why the disconnect to opportunity?"

And one of the things they talked about is there are no opportunities in their community.

And this is where I differ from Rob, I want to upgrade the facilities we have in the community, at Enoch Davis, at Charles Park, and use those CRA dollars that come in annually to help do that, make those hubs for nutrition, for education, for senior services to bridge the digital divide in the community where the kids can reach it.

We've got a big transportation issue, and so it makes sense to have those resources in the community.

The other thing is we don't have enough honest conversation in the community.

And so after my first meeting, the NAACP had six community meetings in different neighborhoods.

I attended all those meetings to talk to folks.

And then I held a youth summit June 1st and brought in young people.

And besides what we expect them to say about not being able to link to opportunity, they talked about problems in their schools, but they also talked about trauma, mental trauma, that young people and folks who are living in poverty deal with every day.

And so I also wanna have a real strong emphasis on mental health within the community.

It's gotta be all hands on deck.

It's not just arrest, it's not just diversion, and we've worked on that, it's across the table, we have to have an emphasis on it.

- [Rob] Robert, what do you think about that answer?

- Well, to be clear, first of all, the Science Center, I would consider west St. Pete part of our community.

So when he says, "We need learning in our community," I have one "A St. Pete for All," that's my campaign slogan.

- [Rob] But the question is transportation to the Science Center, how do the kids from the inner city get out to the west side?

- Absolutely, well it's, you know, the Science Center is just down the road from Tyrone Square mall.

There's a very vibrant bus system going right by there.

I know, 'cause I get stuck behind them when I'm returning home all the time.

It's also next door to Azalea Middle School, so there's plenty of transportation options.

And for 60 years, the Science Center served our community, so it's not like it was some fly by night.

"Why did it fail before?"

Is the question I've been asked.

Well, it took 60 years, so there's multiple generations of kids who went there.

But of course, I support bringing kids from all throughout our city, but again, I would consider every part of our city part of our community, and I'll fight for all parts of our community.

- Let me go to Ken Welch on this one.

Last year, there were many large, and mostly peaceful, protests in St. Pete against the police mistreatment of African-Americans.

Some activists called for defunding the police.

Some of those activists wanted to move money out of the police budget and into social services.

When you hear the call for defunding the police, where do you stand on that issue?

Well, I just, I believe we need to be straight ahead in talking about issues.

And so real quick, let me just respond to Rob's last point about serving the whole community.

We've gotta be straightforward about the problem.

The murders that happen have not happened in Tyrone or Science Center, or where the Science Center is, they've happened in those very communities I talked about literally blocks away from the Enoch Davis Center and from the Charles Park Center.

So that's where the resources should go.

What we saw with those protests last year was, you know, evidence of folks seeing violence right before us and on video, and it's still not being responded to.

And so I supported the peaceful protest.

I've also supported our law enforcement officers down the line, that's why I'm proud to be supported by Sheriff Gualtieri.

But you've gotta have an honest conversation.

I actually attended the rally against hate at Straub Park and was walking with a lot of peaceful protestors.

And we were accosted from folks, many of whom were from out of town, trying to instigate.

So you've gotta have a clear picture of what's happening.

Those protests were not the problem, what we had were folks who came on later at night and wanted to instigate and do harm.

And it's no fair to blame or to paint anyone in the Black Lives Matter movement as being a part of that violence as it is to say anyone who supports President Trump to say they were supportive of the January 6th insurrection.

Those are extremes, and we need to get back to focus on the real issues and the real problem, and that is having police accountability as well as having community accountability.

- Robert, what are your thoughts on the defund the police movement, the BLM movement, and the issues they raised last year?

- Well, as I said, I pushed for more funding for our police officers to make sure they have better training, more sworn officers.

Because when you do see these violent interactions, You know, we need to make sure that our officers have the best equipment to make sure we minimize carnage.

And you don't want any, you know, bystanders ever hurt by this.

That being said, when it comes to the protest last year, I am a strong supporter of our police, and I made the motion at City Council just about a year ago when the protests were really heating up.

And what you were seeing is day after day, people going down the middle of the street and jumping on cars, a couple of times, there was videos of that that went nationwide.

And then people were pulling guns, people were pulling knives, and there was a showdown going on on Beach Drive, which is one of our most densely populated areas.

So I made the motion at City Council, I said, "Far left, far right, Republican, Democrat, everybody marching down the middle of the street has one thing in common.

They're all breaking the traffic laws on the books."

I made the motion to let the police enforce the laws on the books, I could not get a second from my colleagues.

That night, the police ended up anyways, enforcing the laws.

We had no more violent issues in our city after that.

Protestors continued to go down the sidewalk peacefully, and I certainly support everybody's right to free speech because that's how you make real change.

We need community input, we need community interaction.

So I really appreciate everyone sharing their voice, but you cannot do that at the expense of our citizens' public safety.

- Do you think the St. Pete police need any sort of reform?

- I think our police force is the best in the country.

You know, I have the honor and privilege of knowing many, many officers in our force.

I do believe you can always be better, but I do not think there is some kind of systemic problem with our police force.

Our police force is one of the most diverse, culturally, racially, and we have the best equipment and the best training, we have a great, new facility, so I do not think our force needs any reform.

- [Rob] And what would you say on that issue?

- I think every law enforcement organization needs to continually look at itself and get better.

After the protests last year, I led an effort on the County Commission to ask every police agency in the county to review their use of force procedures, and to look at the Eight is Enough criteria, the eight criteria, and every police agency complied with that.

And some of them made some changes, one of them was intervention, stepping in if you see something happening and you're a police officer, and some of them encoded that into their policies and procedures.

The other thing that was really impactful is being able to work with the sheriff, because I have a good relationship with him, to get him to take another look at cameras.

At one point, Sheriff Gualtieri was against cameras, he listened to the community, he listened to his partners, and he changed his mind, and now the deputies, which is the largest agency in the county, are now installing body cameras for every deputy.

St. Pete did the same thing.

And I think that's how you move forward, you have a dialogue, you talk about issues, and you make things better.

- All right, Robert Blackmon, let's talk about affordable housing.

St. Pete is going gangbusters.

I mean, but there are a lot of older houses and affordable housing being torn down, even when it comes to businesses, affordable businesses, where the small business owner is being priced out because of places like Central Avenue and Fourth Street, the new buildings come in and are built, and rents go up and force out either renters, homeowner, I'm sorry, residents, or they force out small businesses.

St. Pete, and Tampa, and Clearwater saw median rents rise 30% over the last year.

And in Pinellas, in Pasco, in Hillsborough, it takes $24,44 an hour to rent a two bedroom apartment.

What would you do to make housing affordable for those people that aren't wealthy, low and moderate income people in St. Pete?

- Well, I'm gonna take one step back to the last question for a second, the Eight is Enough metrics, we looked at them, St. Petersburg was already in line, and we met all of those.

So we reviewed that when that came about, but as far as affordable housing and how we can move that forward, you know, I've led that charge in my private career.

I've rehabbed over 250 units in our city, many of which were not only dilapidated, but many were vacant and boarded when I took over.

And I lived in all of my rental units for a number of years.

So I was really in the community.

We can always do more.

Certainly every platform you have, I've done work as a private developer, but I've also done work as a political figure and on the council, what I've advocated for, and what I'd like to do as mayor is first and foremost, I've made a push for a Bill at the state level to allow municipalities the right to waive fees for any new affordable housing project.

We believe that will pass this year and that will have an impact statewide.

- [Rob] Waive all, what kind of fees?

The impact fees?

- [Robert] Permit fees, yes and impact fees.

Because we have a pot of money in which we can do that, that's the building permit special revenue fund, which we have to burn down statutorily by a Bill that was passed two years ago.

But other than that, I became aware when I was on the council, we put forward between 70 and $73,000, a unit to developers as an incentive for them to build affordable housing units.

And I thought, "Wow, we're giving $73,000 per unit away.

And it's one unit and we never get it back."

So what I've advocated for is changing to a system of city-backed mortgages so that every dollar that enters the affordable housing program will never leave it.

These mortgages will have to be repaid, but they're low interest for people who traditionally wouldn't qualify for a mortgage because you can still buy, you know, vintage stock condos in our city, concrete block, central AC for between 50 and a $125,000.

And if we buy these and then assign these mortgages out, those in the 40% AMI class can afford to actually achieve equity financially and home ownership, which is how you achieve equality, because they'll have the opportunity to achieve the American dream while not taxing our taxpayers citywide, because all of these loans will have to be repaid.

Ken Welch, how do you make sure that low and moderate income people aren't pushed out by the boom that's going on in St. Petersburg?

- Well, that's an important issue and that's something we've actually done at the County Commission in partnership with cities for a while.

Now, let me just say on the Eight is Enough, we had a cup of coffee on that because I did talk to the chief, the intervention piece was not in their regulations.

It was in practice, but not in the regulation, so that was added.

What we've done at the County Commission under my chairmanship in 2006 is we started the first housing trust fund funded by general fund dollars in the county's history.

Started with about $21 million, we added to that incrementally, and then in 2017 through our penny for Pinellas tax, we added $82.5 million on the top for affordable housing.

And our subsidy is not 70,000, we've roughly had about 15 to $17,000.

So we've done that a lot more efficiently, and we've put more than 4,000 units of affordable housing.

And it's affordable for folks making $19 an hour and less, you mentioned the $24.

And it's important because the area median income is about 49,000, or about $23,55, so half the people can't afford that apartment you talked about.

And so we focus on folks making that $19 an hour, $15 an hour, and we're putting first rate apartments on the ground that folks will be happy to live in that upgrade a community.

More than 4,000 units have been put on the ground in Pinellas County, and are still under construction.

We did the same thing on the residential side for ownership using various programs, including the land assembly fund.

So we've done that as a county, I wanna continue that as mayor.

I wanna have an emphasis on that from a policy standpoint and have a person that's accountable to the mayor for getting housing, prioritize and getting more affordable housing on the ground as quickly as possible.

- Ken Welch, the next question goes, starts with you, mask mandates.

There are mayors around the state that have imposed mask mandates and vaccine mandates, the Governor says he's against them.

Would you go along with the Governor and oppose a mask mandate?

Let's say that January comes around, the new mayor is inaugurated, you're the new mayor.

Would you, and we still had a COVID crisis, would you impose a vaccine mandate or a mask mandate on city staff?

- Well, you know, I've had the experience of in my last year, on the commission in 2020, of dealing with the first part of the pandemic.

And so we dealt with the safer at home order, with the mask ordinance, and we came to a spot in Pinellas County where we had something that was practical, that wasn't overbearing, that tried to educate folks and get folks to comply willingly.

So a mask mandate that has no other options is not something I would support.

I would support something like Mayor Castro did, and I spent some time with her last week, she's endorsed my campaign as well, that has that requirement, but also has an opt-out for folks who will then have to have more regular testing as an alternative.

But as we... as long as we can educate folks and drive as many people to getting the vaccine as possible, that's really our only way out of it.

And I like Mayor Castro's approach to it.

- And Robert Blackmon, what would you say about those mayors who've imposed mask or vaccine mandates?

- Right.

Well, we know where the Governor stands, right?

You can't have these mandates.

But then when you look at the way people package things, Jane Castor packaged it as a vaccine mandate and a mask mandate, but at the same time, there's opt-out clauses.

And that's why, you know, we need to have common sense and come together in the middle.

You know, I take the position of a nonpartisan election very seriously, because I think there's not that much, you know, room between really the right and the left.

When you look at it's just people try and package their stances in different ways, and that's why, you know, I've never run as a partisan candidate.

My opponents run as both a Republican and a Democrat.

And what we need to look at is common sense solutions that benefit our citizens.

Certainly we don't want anyone to get sick, that's why I was the one who brought about the vaccine incentives four months before I ended up actually instituting it in St. Petersburg.

And we put it in a watered down version, but also it's currently illegal to knowingly transmit a communicable disease and many other diseases in our state.

So we need to make sure that we're keeping people safe while at the same time, maintaining people's personal freedoms and rights, because people do have a right to make their own medical decisions.

- [Rob] We're almost at the end.

We really only have about 40 seconds for each of you.

But I wonder about this idea of Tallahassee preempting local authority.

And when it comes to Mayor Kriseman, he wanted to have a 100% clean energy policy because of the new changes in the law in Tallahassee, St. Petersburg, won't be able to go forward with that.

Robert Blackmon, what are your thoughts about preempting local governments from enacting their own environmental laws, mask mandates, et cetera?

- Well, I'm always a believer in a small government and also home rule.

So those closest to the issue always know the problem, that being said, sometimes you do have outliers that need to be reeled in.

A good example, is I pushed to end the "technical" state of emergency in our city after 14 months, because I said, "I thought it was hypocritical that our mayor was going to a Winn-Dixie ribbon cutting at the same time saying that we still had a technical state of emergency, which allows the mayor to circumvent council when it comes to financial decisions."

So I think, unless it's an extreme circumstance, home rule should rule, and those closest to the problem can always fix it.

- [Rob] Ken Welch, what would you say about the preemption of local ordinances?

- Well, this is interesting to see, I've served as the first Vice President of the Florida Association of Counties, so I've been elected by commissioners from all over the state from tiny Gadsden County to Miami-Dade.

Every county is different, you can't have blanket orders for a state as diverse as Florida, and that's why these exemption or these preemption initiatives make no sense.

To tell a school board in Pinellas that you can't require masks is much different than a school board in a rural county in north Florida.

So the legislature is using preemption to stop the actions of local governments that they disagree with, plain and simple.

It's hypocrisy.

- [Rob] I wish we had more time.

Ken Welch, thank you very much.

Robert Blackmon, thank you.

And thank you for joining us on Florida This Week.

For St. Petersburg residents, the last day to register to vote in the November election is October 4th.

There are several City Council seats to be decided.

There are also two charter amendment proposals that could change the way the City Council is elected, mail-voting has already begun.

To request a mail-in ballot, call 727-464-VOTE by 5:00 PM on October 23rd.

Election day is November 2nd.

Thanks for watching, send us your comments at FTW@wedu.org, you can view this and past shows online at wedu.org or on the PBS app.

And Florida This Week is now available as a podcast, you can find it on our website or wherever you download your podcasts.

From all of us here at WEDU have a great weekend.

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