There may be no better symbol for St. Petersburg politics right now than the recent vandalism at 400 Central, the city’s gleaming new luxury tower.

According to police, two men caused an estimated $96,000 in damage. One has been arrested, while authorities continue looking for the second as of this writing.

To be clear, Mayor Ken Welch did not vandalize the building. But as metaphors go, it is icing on the cake for his political opponents.

St. Petersburg keeps erecting shiny monuments to progress while someone — or something — keeps turning off the lights. Each time, the mayor, or more often City Hall, arrives with a news release, a task force and a carefully capitalized “Plan” that does not quite work out.

That is the Welch record in brief: ambition, confused execution and a ribbon-cutting scheduled suspiciously close to an election.

Welch came into office promising “principled and inclusive progress.” Four years later, progress has become one of those phrases city officials use the way restaurants use “market price.” You never know exactly what it means, but you can be fairly certain it will cost more than expected — and will not include a Major League Baseball franchise.

The most memorable number attached to Welch’s first term is not a housing goal, flood-relief measure or positive budget result.

It is 34%. A Tampa Bay Times review found that Welch swiped into City Hall on only 34% of workdays during his first eight months in office.

A key-card record does not capture every community meeting, public appearance or hour worked elsewhere, and Welch’s defenders are entitled to make that point. But politics is a business of symbols, and 34% arrived in his opponents’ hands gift-wrapped. Most taxpayers cannot explain that they were spiritually present at work the other 66% of the time.

Then came the Rays.

The Welch administration spent years promoting a $1.3 billion ballpark and Historic Gas Plant redevelopment as a transformational legacy project. The deal was supposed to secure baseball in St. Petersburg, help repair a historic injustice and reshape downtown for generations.

Instead, it collapsed.

The Rays withdrew from the agreement in 2025 after hurricanes, financing delays, increased costs and missed deadlines scrambled the deal. The team spent the 2025 season at Steinbrenner Field in Tampa while St. Petersburg repaired Tropicana Field for nearly $60 million. The Rays returned to the Trop in April 2026, but their new ownership is pursuing a permanent ballpark across the bay in Tampa — or almost anywhere but St. Pete.

That is not merely a negotiating setback.

That is your signature project crossing the Howard Frankland Bridge without you.

Welch now emphasizes that St. Petersburg is “moving forward” without the old stadium plan. Politicians always announce that they are moving forward when the thing they promised is moving somewhere else.

To be fair, the mayor cannot be blamed for hurricanes, Major League Baseball’s leverage or every decision made by Rays ownership and Pinellas County commissioners. But mayors seek credit for deals while those deals are alive. They cannot suddenly become innocent bystanders at the funeral.

After hurricanes Helene and Milton, residents in Shore Acres and other flooded neighborhoods waited amid mountains of ruined drywall, furniture, appliances and household memories. The debris piles lingered long enough to acquire a name: “Welch piles.”

Residents mocked them, decorated them for Halloween and complained that the city’s debris tracker was woefully inaccurate. Some reported rats flourishing in and around the “Welch piles.”

Nothing says “resilient city” quite like a waterlogged sofa wearing a Halloween costume while waiting for municipal pickup.

The city eventually collected more than 1.8 million cubic yards of debris, but the first citywide collection phase was not completed until roughly two months after Milton. Families living beside the rotting remnants of their homes probably found that statistic less than comforting.

Now, nearly two years after the storms, the city is celebrating flood-mitigation funding for Shore Acres. A major project of roughly $33 million is expected to add pump capacity, culverts and backflow protection. The state recently provided another $2 million for accelerated improvements intended to reduce flooding for more than 350 structures.

Good.

Build it. Accelerate it. Put three shifts on it if necessary.

There is a difference between preparedness and belated construction.

A pump installed after the disaster is infrastructure.

A pump operating before the disaster is leadership.

Welch says that when residents demand flood relief, his administration “immediately” gets to work. In Florida government, apparently, immediately means after two hurricanes, months of debris, public fury, engineering studies, appropriations, permitting and the approach of a mayoral election.

The city’s water-billing mess has not helped. Residents have complained about irregular and unexpectedly high bills, while a management study and billing-software upgrade remained unfinished as mayoral candidates debated the issue this summer.

St. Petersburg has reached the point where opening a utility bill can feel like reading a ransom note.

The main difference is that the ransom note usually explains what the money is for.

Welch’s opponents have also attacked taxes and spending. One campaign claim that City Hall spending had “tripled” was inaccurate enough to require revision. Still, residents can be forgiven for failing to applaud. A lower tax rate applied to rapidly rising property values can still produce a larger tax bill, while officials consider asking voters to approve an additional property tax for drainage and sewer upgrades.

That is the municipal version of a restaurant lowering the price of coffee while adding a plumbing surcharge to the check.

Meanwhile, St. Petersburg’s housing crisis remains visible from nearly every new luxury balcony.

Welch made affordable housing a central promise, and his administration can point to assistance programs and units created. Still, many residents — including several mayoral candidates — question whether the city’s obsession with downtown development has come at the expense of ordinary neighborhoods.

The skyline keeps rising.

So do rents, insurance costs, utility bills and the suspicion that “inclusive progress” includes everyone who can afford a rooftop pool.

Then there is the Historic Gas Plant District — again.

Welch recently selected Blake Investment Partners for an $8.1 billion redevelopment concept covering roughly 58 acres, with more than 3,600 affordable and workforce housing units, a public park, business development and a permanent home for the Woodson African American Museum.

Those are potentially valuable commitments. They are also not a finished deal. The project still faces negotiations and City Council approval, and council member and mayoral challenger Brandi Gabbard has raised transparency concerns, saying she had not seen the Urban Land Institute study requested before Welch announced his selection.

Welch dismisses claims that the process is rushed, noting that redevelopment of the Gas Plant area has been discussed for decades.

A project can be historically overdue and politically hurried at the same time.

The Woodson museum’s reopening after a $1 million renovation is welcome news. So are the Shore Acres funding, repaired Trop and arrest in the 400 Central vandalism case.

The problem is that too many Welch “wins” resemble rescue operations:

Repair the stadium after the roof is gone.

Redesign the Gas Plant project after the baseball deal is gone.

Accelerate flood projects after homes have flooded.

Fix billing after residents receive bewildering bills.

Defend workplace visibility after 34% becomes a campaign slogan.

A recent St. Pete Polls survey placed support for Welch in the mid-teens, with Charlie Crist holding a double-digit lead in the crowded mayoral field. Polls are snapshots rather than verdicts, and Crist carries enough political baggage to require airport assistance.

Still, an incumbent mayor polling around 16% is clearly a public evaluation.

Welch often speaks in the language of pillars, principles, equity, resilience and intentional progress. Those words sound impressive at a podium.

Residents generally judge a mayor using simpler measurements:

Did the trash get picked up?

Did the water drain?

Was the bill correct?

Did the deal hold together?

Was somebody visibly in charge?

Ken Welch may survive the Rays, the rains, the rats, the rising bills and the real-estate vandals. Florida politics has produced stranger comebacks.

But he may not survive the growing conclusion that his administration has become better at announcing the next solution than preventing the previous failure.

In St. Petersburg, the lights keep coming back on — but too often only after the damage is done.

Voters must decide whether Welch is leading the city or delivering drive-by politics after each emergency.

Larry D. Clifton is a native Floridian, a graduate of Eckerd College and the author of the science fiction thriller “Martin’s Secret,” available at Barnes & Noble. He has written several guest columns for the Times, including a recent one about a trip to a local Walmart.