In her July 18 Wall Street Journal column, Peggy Noonan wrote about a fire that burned down her family home when she was a child. As she put it, you never really get over a fire. It changes the way you see things. You understand that some things—basic things, like safety, security, and survival—are essential, and everything else is secondary.
Noonan’s point was clear: governments need to focus on the primary and essential tasks, and citizens must demand it.
This resonates powerfully in St. Petersburg, where city and county officials are on the verge of committing taxpayers to as much as $2.4 billion for a new stadium and redevelopment project for the Tampa Bay Rays. (Full details here.) That’s $2.4 billion from Pinellas County and St. Petersburg—money that could go to a thousand better uses. Just look around.
Infrastructure Needed to Protect People and Property
St. Petersburg’s infrastructure is crumbling. The city’s water, sewer, and stormwater systems need more than $5 billion in repairs and upgrades. Our beaches, a key driver of tourism and the first line of defense against hurricanes, need hundreds of millions of dollars in repairs.
Emergency Reserves. And we’re not prepared for the next storm—we don’t have the reserves we need to recover quickly from a disaster, let alone build resilience for the future. These are the things that matter. This is what keeps a city functional and keeps its residents safe.
But instead of focusing on these essentials, the city and county are prepared to sink billions into a stadium for a baseball team. Sure, a shiny new ballpark sounds nice. But let’s be honest: the primary beneficiary here is the Rays organization, a private business. Meanwhile, the people of St. Petersburg and Pinellas County are left to deal with crumbling pipes, flooded streets, and a coastline that’s under constant threat.
Budgets Reveal Priorities
This isn’t about being anti-baseball. It’s about priorities.
A stadium isn’t essential. Clean water, functioning sewers, safe streets, and storm protection are. The money that’s being earmarked for this stadium should be going to those basic needs. If we don’t demand that our leaders get their priorities straight, we’ll be left footing the bill for their bad decisions while our real problems get worse.
Peggy Noonan’s words are a warning: when you neglect the essentials, the consequences are long-lasting.
We’ve seen it with cities that ignored infrastructure until it was too late. We’ve seen it with communities unprepared for disasters. And we’ve seen it with governments that prioritized flashy projects over basic needs. St. Petersburg can’t afford to be the next cautionary tale. It’s time to focus on what really matters.
