St. Pete said the permit backlog would be gone by March.
It’s October.
A year after Hurricane Helene walloped Tampa Bay, St. Petersburg homeowners are still telling the same story: roofs tarped, repairs stalled, and permits stuck. In March, Mayor Ken Welch said the post-disaster permitting backlog would be cleared by the end of that month. But as recently as this week, residents told reporters they’re still waiting — and the city still hasn’t said how many permits remain in limbo.
City Hall points to progress. Officials say they’ve issued more than 14,500 post-disaster emergency permits worth roughly $300 million and expect to return to “blue-sky” (normal) review times imminently. That’s real volume. It’s also not what matters to people who’ve watched one “two-week” timeline roll into the next while rainwater creeps behind tar paper.
Here’s what’s missing: numbers that mean something to a homeowner — outstanding permits by type, median days in review, and how many applications are kicked back for correction. FOX 13 says it repeatedly asked the city for the exact number of pending permits and got no answer. The public also deserves clarity on staffing: how many reviewers have been added, how many vacancies remain, and how much overtime has been authorized to burn the queue down.
Some residents have even received code-violation notices while they wait for approvals — the worst-case collision of bureaucracy with real life. If the city is truly on the cusp of clearing the backlog, it should be easy to publish the scoreboard: a daily-updated dashboard that shows count-by-permit-type, age-of-backlog, and projected clearance dates. Pair that with a plain-English “what to expect” timeline for common storm repairs and live office hours (virtual and in-person) where reviewers troubleshoot stuck applications on the spot.
There’s also a records piece here. Red Tape Florida has filed public records requests for: 1) the weekly backlog report (or closest internal equivalent) since January; 2) reviewer staffing levels, vacancies, and overtime records since November; 3) the number of code citations issued to properties with pending storm-repair permits; and 4) the city’s internal memos on the promised March clearance. If those documents match the rhetoric, great — publish them and show your work. If they don’t, own it and reset expectations with dates and data.
To be fair, St. Pete’s permitting office was already strained before Helene — demand surged along with construction, then two storms in two months pushed the workflow past its limits. But “we’re working on it” no longer works. Homeowners need finish lines, not press conferences. St. Pete can win back trust quickly with transparency, triage, and a little humility: tell people exactly where they stand, exactly what’s missing, and exactly when they can expect an inspection. Then hit those dates.