St. Petersburg City Council approves expansion of ban on sidewalk activity

St. Petersburg City Council voted 5-3 last Thursday to expand the city’s sidewalk ordinance across a larger part of the city, including City Hall. The changes were opposed by council members Richie Floyd, Deborah Figgs-Sanders, and Bro. Rev. John Muhammad who all voted against the measure that limits who and what can be on public sidewalks.

Under the new ordinance, any tables or table-like objects could be subject to seizure at the discretion of St. Petersburg Police Department (SPPD) officers.

“I see how SPPD has given us every reason to believe that they would use this sparingly,” Floyd said at the meeting. “But I have to vote on something that will probably exist 10 years from now when it’s a different administration and different police officers.”

The new language removes the requirement for a formal written notice from law enforcement. Originally pushed by council member Gina Driscoll back in 2019, the once-small “prohibited area,” for such activities will now go all the way to the Grand Central district, the Pier, and the Edge district. According to Laura Roe, legal division manager for SPPD, only one person has been cited under the current sidewalk ordinance.


This isn’t the first time St. Pete has limited sidewalk activity under threat of controversy. In 2009, the ACLU of Pinellas County fought against then-Mayor Rick Baker’s push to cede the public sidewalk around Baywalk (now Sundial) to the property owners. Civil rights historian and professor Dr. Ray Arsenault, former president of the ACLU of Pinellas County, told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay that this ordinance hurts free speech.

“Imagine how this city has developed in so many interesting cultural ways since the early-’90s, it’s really a culture of free-expression and entrepreneurial spirit,” Arsenault told CL. “This seems to be in such opposition to that, and it just seems that they don’t know the history of the city over the 30 years.”

Arsenault was part of the push to petition the city to allow for sidewalk dining back in the 1980s. That change to allow activity in the public thoroughfare, notes Arsenault, was part of the city’s renaissance.

“This is just a terrible idea, I really do think that from a civil liberties point of view and just from a practical sense, what kind of spirit do you want your city to have?” Arsenault told CL. “It’s almost like all they want people to do is come downtown and shop or go to a restaurant.”

As the city has grown, local mutual aid groups like St. Pete Food Not Bombs (SPFNB), which feeds the homeless weekly at Williams Park and Mirror Lake, are concerned that their work is being targeted. SPFNB Syl Moulston told council that the new law is going to hurt the work they do for the city’s most vulnerable.

“This law would dramatically hinder our ability to serve our most needy citizens,” Moulston said at the meeting. “This law is an active attack on people who are already suffering so much. It is cruel. It is uncaring, it is soulless.”

SPPD has previously said that groups like SPFNB wouldn’t be impacted. William Kilgore with the St. Pete Tenants Union (SPTU) told CL he’s concerned about SPFNB in particular. Rights of way, sidewalks, adjacent landscaping and other areas are covered under the new language.

“They can’t actually set up in the park, they can’t set up on the grass, and they can’t set up on the sidewalk,” Kilgore said. “The police kept saying, we’ll work with people and set them up in an area where they can set up. Where is this magical area?”

Kilgore says that the sidewalk ban is going to directly impact the organizing efforts that often take place outside of city hall. He doesn’t believe the ordinance is directly targeted at groups like SPTU or SPFNB but at protest groups in general.

“I think protests are one of the reasons behind this ordinance and workers organizing people who are critical of the city,” Kilgore told CL. “This has a chilling effect on those groups and organizers.”

In the last year alone, huge actions have taken place in front of city hall steps demanding rent control and solutions to the housing crisis. At the same time as council was voting to expand the ordinance, Faith in Florida held a rally to demand St. Pete keep the Gas Plant District locally owned. Under the new ordinance, those groups would need a permit to gather or rely on the discretion of law enforcement.