Is Ken Welch hiding in one of his ‘Welch piles’? Maybe not, but for the people of Shore Acres, he might as well be

Image via city of St. Petersburg.

It’s been nearly three weeks since St. Petersburg Mayor Ken Welch has visited the Shore Acres neighborhood, the city’s hardest hit area due to massive flooding related to Hurricane Helene.

When the neighborhood had a meeting less than two weeks ago, guess who wasn’t there? That’s right, Ken Welch.

Welch has visited Shore Acres twice since Hurricane Helene caused as much as 7 feet of storm surge in the city’s most flood-prone neighborhood, according to his staff. One visit came two days after Helene made landfall north of St. Pete in the Big Bend region, on Sept. 28. His next visit came after Hurricane Milton exacerbated damage, on an Oct. 11 damage assessment tour.

Shore Acres Civic Association President Kevin Batdorf estimates about 85-90% of homes in the neighborhood experienced at least some flooding. Some residents reported water up to doorknobs. Batdorf, speaking to the St. Pete Catalyst after the storm, described the devastation he observed traveling through the neighborhood as being “like driving through a canyon of people’s lives on the curb.”

And even as homeowners are making progress rebuilding their lives — waterlogged drywall removed, construction begun — the contents of their homes in many areas still sit rotting and molding on curbs. Many residents frustrated with the debris removal process have taken to calling the mounds of home contents “Welch piles.”

To put Welch’s two visits into perspective, the President of the United States has visited the area just one time fewer than the Mayor has visited his most devastated neighborhood.

So what has he been doing instead?

On Wednesday, he went to a ribbon cutting for a new Habitat for Humanity home built to help a lower income family who, without the assistance, might not have been able to achieve the dream of home ownership. Under normal circumstances, it would be a worthy use of his time to celebrate that family. Even under these circumstances, it still is … so long as the thousands of residents currently displaced from their homes were also adequately attended to.

Over the weekend, Welch attended a St. Pete Fire Rescue open house in celebration of Fire Prevention Month and the Department’s new permanent Chief, Keith Watts. Welch’s official Facebook page shows him smiling alongside city firefighters next to a tray full of cookies near the fire house’s kitchen, which notably doesn’t have its cabinets and drywall removed due to flooding.

His social media channels include a couple of video updates from the Mayor, both standing in front of large mounds of debris, but not the mounds of debris cluttering curbs in front of people’s battered homes.

No one expects Welch to be in the neighborhood every day. It’s safe to say most people know that the best help a Mayor can give is ensuring resources are deployed where they are most needed.

The problem is, Welch has not inspired confidence that that is happening. And those “Welch piles” are a daily reminder. It would go a long way for storm-battered residents — many of whom are considering never returning to the city at all — for Welch to personally update them on when recovery will get to them, not just a bird’s eye view of citywide efforts.

Around this time of year — Presidential Election time, that is — we hear a lot of candidates and their surrogates asking, “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” The question often ignores larger economic realities that those in the know understand, but which average citizens have no interest in. It’s one thing to be told the economy is doing great, it’s another thing to go to the grocery store and still be paying significantly more than a few years ago.

That’s the sort of optics at play in St. Pete right now, and more acutely in Shore Acres.

Yes, Welch and the city staff are making notable progress on recovery. Welch’s social media channels are also chock full of links to resources and updates on debris removal progress. A real-time map established so residents can check progress on debris removal shows that as of Thursday morning, more than 368,000 cubic yards of debris had been removed from St. Pete curbs.

But if you are among those who still have debris sitting in front of your house, that number means very little.

The perception is made worse by the reputation Welch has thus far built for himself as St. Petersburg Mayor. Early in his administration he faced significant blowback over the perception of absenteeism. A Tampa Bay Times investigation into Welch’s attendance at City Hall found some troubling trends. Welch had used his swipe card — the ID badge issued to access City Hall offices, including his own — just 34% of normal workdays during his first eight months on the job.

Worse, the same investigation found that as Hurricane Ian approached Florida in 2022, Welch chose not to stay at the Emergency Operations Center at the St. Petersburg Police Department, opting instead to go home while his top staff left their own families to sleep at the facility.

Welch told the Tampa Bay Times at the time that because the “storm has changed direction,” “there was no issue.”

The storm did change direction, but it could have done so again. It didn’t, thankfully for our region, but that’s not the point. Welch sent the message that, as Mayor, being with his family was more important than taking command of an emergency situation, as Mayors before him have always done. Welch’s predecessor, Rick Kriseman, worked around the clock in the days leading up to and following Hurricane Irma in 2017. Welch also sent the message that he could skip out on his responsibility, but his staff could not.

And now here we are two years later and it appears little has changed. For all of the valuable information and resources provided on Welch’s social media channels, it’s obvious that most of them are posted not by Welch himself, but by his staff. While that’s not unusual or even uncommon, it’s a reminder that for this Mayor, showing up is not the priority.