St. Petersburg residents will decide in November whether to approve a new property tax to speed up stormwater, sewage and water infrastructure projects, after the City Council voted 7-0 Thursday to place the question on the general election ballot.

The measure would authorize the city to issue bonds financing $600 million in upgrades. Council member Gina Driscoll was absent for the vote.

Property owners would pay up to roughly $96 for every $100,000 of taxable property value, though initial payments are expected to be lower since the city plans to phase in debt incrementally through bond issuances. The bonds carry a 30-year repayment term.

Mayor Ken Welch’s administration says the tax addresses long-deferred infrastructure upgrades, pointing to back-to-back hurricanes in 2024 that caused historic flooding and forced the temporary shutdown of two of the city’s three sewage plants.

Even without the new tax, the city is already moving forward with a $2.7 billion list of drainage and water projects, currently projected to take 24 years to complete under existing utility billing rates. The new property tax would shorten that timeline to 19 years — meaning residents are being asked to pay significantly more, sooner, for work the city says would happen regardless.

Some residents argue the investment would pay for itself. Joe Craig, a board member of the Venetian Isles Homeowners Association, said chronic flooding has already pushed down home values in his neighborhood, and that the upgrades could help values recover.

But not everyone is convinced the plan as written deserves a blank check. Groups including the Suncoast Sierra Club, the Council of Neighborhood Associations and the League of Women Voters of the St. Petersburg Area have pressed the city for more transparency on how the money would actually be spent before fully backing the measure. Suncoast Sierra Club Executive Committee Chair James Scott said in a letter that the group’s support “will remain contingent on visible, timely follow-through” — language that suggests even sympathetic advocacy groups aren’t fully trusting City Hall’s follow-through record.

In response to those concerns, council member Richie Floyd pushed through a set of add-ons before the ballot language was finalized: a public-facing spending dashboard, a citizen-led advisory board, and a requirement that nature-based flood solutions get equal consideration alongside traditional infrastructure.

Notably, the city is legally barred from spending public money to campaign for the referendum’s passage — meaning outside advocacy groups, not city officials, will carry the burden of selling voters on the tax increase.

Some residents are also raising a bigger-picture affordability concern. Vanessa Pugliese, president of the Riviera Bay Civic Association — a neighborhood hit hard by the 2024 storms — asked what happens if a separate statewide measure to raise the homestead tax exemption passes. City officials confirmed that scenario would shrink St. Petersburg’s taxable property base, potentially pushing higher tax bills onto owners of higher-value homes to make up the difference.

“We would like to have our voters be educated before they vote on what this is going to cost them, because the cost of housing and the cost of living in St. Petersburg is very high right now,” Pugliese said.

The vote comes as the Suncoast Sierra Club announced its endorsement of council member Brandi Gabbard over Mayor Welch in the upcoming mayoral primary, set for Aug. 18.

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