{"id":251329,"date":"2026-04-29T17:51:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-29T17:51:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/251329\/"},"modified":"2026-04-29T17:51:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-29T17:51:12","slug":"st-pete-eyes-600-million-resiliency-bond-to-tackle-flooding-and-harden-city-infrastructure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/251329\/","title":{"rendered":"St. Pete eyes $600 million resiliency bond to tackle flooding and harden city infrastructure"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"\" style=\"white-space:pre-wrap;\">Heavy rainfall and storm surge have exposed serious vulnerabilities in St. Pete&#8217;s aging infrastructure over the years, and the city is now asking whether a $600 million bond is the right tool to fix it faster.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\" style=\"white-space:pre-wrap;\">Last Thursday, the City&#8217;s Budget, Finance, and Taxation Committee discussed placing a General Obligation (GO) bond referendum on the November 2026 ballot. <\/p>\n<p class=\"\" style=\"white-space:pre-wrap;\">The proceeds would fund a portion of projects under the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.stpete.org\/government\/initiatives___programs\/spar.php\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">St. Pete Agile Resilience (SPAR)<\/a> program, a city-led initiative to accelerate flood protection, stormwater improvements, and utility system hardening before the next major storm arrives.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\" style=\"white-space:pre-wrap;\">The $2.7 billion SPAR program, which will be set up regardless of a potential November referendum, will be funded through utility fees. <\/p>\n<p class=\"\" style=\"white-space:pre-wrap;\">Without the bond, that work gets spread over 24 years through fiscal year 2050 as utility revenue accumulates. <\/p>\n<p class=\"\" style=\"white-space:pre-wrap;\">What the proposed $600 million GO bond would do is front-load roughly five years of construction, compressing the timeline to 19 years by injecting bond proceeds into the early years of the program, roughly 2027 through 2031, while utility rate funding continues alongside it. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Heavy rainfall and storm surge have exposed serious vulnerabilities in St. Pete&#8217;s aging infrastructure over the years, and&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":251330,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-251329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=251329"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251329\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/251330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}