Pinellas County Commissioners are in a unique position. They have $7.1 million to spend in any way they see fit.

Still, Commission Chair Charlie Justice wants to make sure the money is spent wisely with plenty of input from the community as part of the decision process. 

It's a balmy day under a thick cover of wetland overgrowth just a few hundred feet away from half million dollar homes at Feather Sound on the western shore of Old Tampa Bay. Navigating narrow canals, contractors are carving away a dense, crisscrossing network of decades-old mosquito ditches. In their place, grades will be leveled and waterways opened up to the Bay, in the hopes of reconstructing a teeming tidal wetland that seamlessly transitions from shallow sea grasses to salt barrens and mangroves through to coastal uplands.  

St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Kriseman took to Twitter on Wednesday to express his pride over a drop in the city's number of vacant homes.

St. Petersburg's growing beer scene welcomed another craft brewery into the fold Thursday.

Flying Boat Brewing Co. broke ground on an 11,000-square-foot facility at 1776 11th Ave. N on Thursday morning. Owners Glenn Zakany, Tanner Zakany and Josh Perian joined St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Kriseman at the brewery near Woodlawn Park. 

"Look good, dress good, feel good, sound good," could be heard echoing through the banquet hall of the Hilton Hotel in downtown St. Pete last Saturday as 19 beaus performed a flawless drill performance led by Drill Master Marlin Heyward.

Six months in the making, the 2015-16 Beautillion Militaire Crème de la Crème Scholarship Ball, a first for the St. Petersburg area, was a highly anticipated event that did not disappoint.

Delta Sigma Theta Sorority St. Petersburg Alumnae Chapter in conjunction with their foundation the St. Petersburg Alumnae Chapter Educational Services hosted the event.  

St. Petersburg officials are trying to manage abandoned homes. Plenty of empty properties currently sit, decaying. They are like zombie houses, with shattered windows, boarded up doors, and beer cans and bottles strewn about.

Code compliance workers call these boarded up homes"problem properties." Officials have made efforts to fix - or get rid of - them a priority. "Mayor Krisman has told us all that it's not acceptable to just say there's not a solution. So we've tried to be very creative to try to come up with new solutions," the city's code compliance director, Rob Gerdes, said.   

Claude Tankersley, the city's new public works administrator, wants to improve communication in a part of city government known for its engineering jargon and bureaucratic rigidity. 


Seated in his office down the hall from Mayor Rick Kriseman, Tankersley says he makes certain that he knows exactly what is going on in his realm of city government: 650 employees spread across five departments handling the city's water, stormwater, vehicles, purchasing and capital projects, including closely-watched items like the new Pier