Hurricanes Helene and Milton did not just rearrange the sand on Pinellas County’s barrier islands. They rearranged the leadership.
In the fall of 2024, the back-to-back storms drove record storm surge into beach communities stretching from St. Pete Beach to Indian Rocks Beach, flooding city halls, wrecking seawalls and swamping thousands of homes. The destruction exposed cracks in local government that had been forming long before the first winds arrived — aging infrastructure, outdated technology, permitting backlogs and toxic workplace cultures that had already chased out city managers and demoralized staff.
Now, four barrier-island cities are being led by people who were not in charge when the storms hit. Each walked into a job shaped by crisis and defined by the failures, real or perceived, of whoever came before…