{"id":419667,"date":"2026-10-05T23:20:01","date_gmt":"2026-10-05T23:20:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/419667\/"},"modified":"2026-10-05T23:20:01","modified_gmt":"2026-10-05T23:20:01","slug":"creating-connection-through-community-st-pete-catalyst","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/419667\/","title":{"rendered":"Creating connection through community – St Pete Catalyst"},"content":{"rendered":"

Welcome to the Catalyst\u2019s Community Voices platform. We\u2019ve curated community leaders and thinkers from all parts of our great city to speak issues that affect us all. Visit our\u00a0Community Voices page<\/a>\u00a0for more details.<\/p>\n

Standing inside St. Petersburg Catholic High School during the Residents of West St. Pete CommUNITY Meeting Sept. 30, I had a moment to look around the room and take it all in. I graduated there in 2014, so returning more than a decade later, surrounded by residents, neighborhood leaders and community partners from across St. Pete, carried a special significance.<\/p>\n

More than 100 residents had gathered alongside representatives from 13 neighborhoods, city departments, public safety officials, civic organizations and community partners. What struck me most was that none of it had begun with one meeting. The relationships in that room had grown through years of smaller efforts that, together, helped create the civic infrastructure that made the evening possible.<\/p>\n

My own introduction to neighborhood leadership came when I became vice president of the Eagle Crest Civic Association at 19 years old. That experience taught me that community building usually starts with simple things: answering questions, sharing information, helping residents navigate City Hall and giving neighbors reasons to connect.<\/p>\n

When the pandemic disrupted many of those traditional connections in 2020, I created the Residents of West St. Pete Facebook group. Our neighborhoods have distinct identities, but the issues affecting them rarely stop at their boundaries. Residents needed a place to understand what was happening across the west side, not only on their own street.<\/p>\n

Service became another way to bring people together. Food drives that began in Eagle Crest grew into the West St. Pete Food Drive. Park cleanups at Azalea Park and Walter Fuller Park, in partnership with Keep Pinellas Beautiful, gave residents opportunities to work side by side.<\/p>\n

Around Memorial Day weekend, volunteers from our community also joined hundreds of others at Bay Pines National Cemetery to place and later retrieve American flags honoring veterans.<\/p>\n

My leadership as president of the Crossroads Area Neighborhood Association has kept me grounded in the importance of individual neighborhoods, while my past involvement with the Council of Neighborhood Associations, or CONA, reinforced what is possible when those neighborhoods work together.<\/p>\n

That same thinking helped shape the West St. Pete CommUNITY Picnic at Azalea Park, which eventually evolved into the St. Pete CommUNITY Festival. The festival then heon lped lead to the creation of the Stronger Together St. Pete Foundation, with a mission extending beyond one annual event to community building, service, civic engagement and collaboration.<\/p>\n

Author and speaker Peter Kageyama has used the term \u201cco-creators\u201d to describe people who actively help shape the communities they love. That idea resonates with me because residents are not simply customers of government or spectators watching their city change around them. They are participants in shaping what their community becomes.<\/p>\n

That philosophy also shaped the Residents of West St. Pete Mayoral Forum this summer. Stronger Together partnered with 10 neighborhood associations and Spectrum Bay News 9 to create a free, public and nonpartisan opportunity for residents to hear directly from the candidates seeking to lead St. Petersburg. The goal was not to tell people what to think, but to create space for them to become more informed and engaged.<\/p>\n

The Sept. 30 CommUNITY Meeting was the next evolution of that idea.<\/p>\n

This time, the community itself was the focus. Thirteen neighborhood partners came together: Azalea, Crossroads Area, Eagle Crest, Garden Manor, Holiday Park, Jungle Prada, Jungle Terrace, Lake Pasadena Estates, Live Oaks, Old Pasadena, Pasadena Bear Creek, Westminster Heights and Yacht Club Estates.<\/p>\n

The resource fair connected residents with the St. Petersburg Police Department, St. Petersburg Fire Rescue and city teams working in stormwater, transportation, water resources, housing, codes, neighborhood relations, parks and permitting. The Pinellas County Supervisor of Elections and the League of Women Voters of the St. Petersburg Area also participated.<\/p>\n

The program included St. Petersburg Catholic High School President Ross Bubolz, District 1 City Councilmember Copley Gerdes, Police Chief Anthony Holloway, Fire Rescue Chief Keith Watts, Neighborhood Services Managing Director Joe Waugh, Joe Hamilton with the St. Petersburg Science Center, Jungle Prada Neighborhood Association President Juliana Fisher and Heidi Davis of the League of Women Voters of the St. Petersburg Area.<\/p>\n

But some of the most important moments happened away from the microphone. Residents spoke directly with city staff, neighborhood leaders exchanged information, people discovered organizations and resources they had not known existed, and conversations connected issues in one neighborhood with those facing another.<\/p>\n

Those interactions are difficult to quantify, but they are civic infrastructure. They create trust, strengthen relationships and make it easier for residents to understand how decisions are made and how to participate.<\/p>\n

That becomes increasingly important as St. Petersburg continues to grow and change.<\/p>\n

Responsible growth cannot be measured only by what gets built, how many people move here or how much investment enters the city. It also requires us to think about how we preserve a sense of place, strengthen neighborhood identity, maintain trust and make sure residents continue to have meaningful ways to shape the future.<\/p>\n

That is where stewardship matters.<\/p>\n

Those of us entrusted with neighborhood organizations, nonprofits, civic institutions or community platforms should see ourselves as stewards of that work. The responsibility is not simply to maintain an organization, host an event or complete a project. It is to strengthen the relationships around it, invite more people into the process and leave the community more connected than we found it.<\/p>\n

None of the efforts that ultimately led to Sept. 30 happened because of one person or one organization. They depended on neighborhood leaders, volunteers, community partners, city staff, nonprofits, residents and institutions repeatedly deciding that working together was worth the effort.<\/p>\n

There was never a master plan connecting a neighborhood food drive to a Facebook group, a park cleanup, CONA, a festival, a foundation, a mayoral forum and eventually an auditorium filled with West St. Pete residents. One project simply created another relationship, partnership or idea worth pursuing.<\/p>\n

What has taken shape in West St. Pete also does not need to remain only a West St. Pete story. The model is not one particular meeting, organization or event. It is the practice of bringing neighborhoods together, sharing information, creating opportunities to serve and giving residents more direct ways to engage with the institutions shaping their lives.<\/p>\n

That same approach could take deeper root across South St. Pete, North St. Pete and the broader east side of the city. Each should look different, shaped by its own neighborhoods, history, challenges and community leaders.<\/p>\n

Every neighborhood should maintain its own identity and traditions. But neighborhood boundaries should never become barriers to collaboration.<\/p>\n

If we want St. Petersburg to remain a city where people feel connected to where they live and invested in where it is going, civic and community engagement cannot be something we turn to only during an election, controversy or crisis. It has to be an ongoing practice.<\/p>\n

The strongest communities are not simply places where people live alongside one another. They are places people help create together.<\/p>\n

Aron Bryce is Founder & President of the Stronger Together St. Pete Foundation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Welcome to the Catalyst\u2019s Community Voices platform. We\u2019ve curated community leaders and thinkers from all parts of our…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":419668,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-419667","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\/419667","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=419667"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419667\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/419668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=419667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=419667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=419667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}