Next was St. Petersburg Mayor Kenneth T. Welch, a third generation St. Petersburg resident and the city\u2019s first African American mayor. He earned a bachelor of arts degree from the University of South Florida St. Petersburg, and an MBA from Florida A&M University. Welch served as a Pinellas County Commissioner for 20 years, and his father was a city council member. The mayor grew up in the Gas Plant area of St. Petersburg, where Tropicana Field now stands.<\/p>\n
As he sat across a conference room table from the students, Welch leaned back and smiled. \u201cIt\u2019s a great job,\u201d he said. \u201cBut it\u2019s a big responsibility.\u201d He said he and his staff were excited to host the first Eckerd College Day, and he asked each student their name and their major. \u201cThank you for being here,\u201d he told each one. \u201cI know when the hurricanes hit in 2024, Eckerd was ground zero.\u201d<\/p>\n
Among the issues that concern him, he said, were some state mandates that don\u2019t fit with St. Petersburg\u2019s goals\u2014issues involving DEI, climate change, gerrymandering, property taxes and unlimited campaign contributions. His priorities, he said, are affordable housing, safe neighborhoods, infrastructure and the environment. \u201cThe great equalizer,\u201d he added, \u201cis elections.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Next was St. Petersburg Mayor Kenneth T. Welch, a third generation St. Petersburg resident and the city\u2019s first…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":252803,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[110324,34332,5957,4150,88717,2346,202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-252802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-ann-sherman-white","tag-anthony-holloway","tag-city-hall","tag-city-of-st-petersburg","tag-ecos","tag-ken-welch","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\/252802","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=252802"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252802\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/252803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=252802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=252802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=252802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}