How to Participate

City Council meetings are open to the public, and there's more than one way to watch, listen, or speak. Here's how it works, based on the City's own meeting instructions.

Attend in person

Meetings are held in Council Chambers at City Hall, 175 5th St N, St. Petersburg, FL. Regular Council meets on the first three Thursdays of the month — 1st Thursday at 9 a.m., 2nd Thursday at 3 p.m., 3rd Thursday at 1:30 p.m. — though times shift around holidays, so always check the specific date on the meetings list or the City's agenda page before you go.

If you want to speak at a public hearing or a quasi-judicial proceeding (see the glossary), the City requires you to attend in person — remote comment isn't accepted for those items.

Speaking during a meeting

Every agenda carries the same instructions on its cover page, and they're worth reading in full before you go (see, for example, the February 12, 2026 agenda). The essentials:

• Open Forum is the agenda item set aside for comments on any City-government subject that isn't already on the agenda. Only City residents, property or business owners in the City, or their employees may speak.
• Public Hearings, Appeals, and Open Forum each carry a three-minute time limit per speaker, noted on that meeting's agenda.
• For other, non-hearing agenda items, the City has taken remote public comment through Zoom's "raise hand" feature (by computer, in the app; by phone, by pressing *9) — the specific dial-in numbers and Zoom link change per meeting and are printed on that meeting's own agenda, not reused from meeting to meeting.
• Any presentation materials must be submitted to the City Clerk in advance of the meeting.
• The meeting's chair has discretion to re-order agenda items or, if a meeting is disrupted, to shift to alternate comment methods (including email only).

Because these details can shift slightly by meeting, treat the specific meeting's own agenda PDF as the final word — this page summarizes the general pattern, not a fixed rule that never changes.

Watching live

• Cable: Channel 15 (WOW!), Channel 641 (Spectrum), or Channel 20 (Frontier FiOS)
• Web stream: stpete.org/TV (the City's own StPeteTV stream)
• YouTube: the City's StPeteTV channel also carries live meetings
• Alternate stream: if the main stream has trouble, the City's backup is hosted on Granicus
• Recordings: past meetings are archived on the City's Recorded Council Meetings page, and this site links each meeting's own video where available

Contacting Council

To reach Council as a body (not an individual member — see the council members roster, though individual contact pages are coming in a later phase of this project):

• City Council Administrative Officer: Jayne Ohlman — jayne.ohlman@stpete.org / 727-893-7118
• Council office: 727-893-7117
• Mail: City Council, PO Box 2842, St. Petersburg, FL 33731

For accommodations under the ADA, or for other special arrangements to participate in a meeting, contact the City Clerk's Office at 727-893-7448 (TDD: 727-892-5259) at least 72 hours before the meeting.

Sources

Facts on this page were checked directly against the City's meetings page, City Council page, StPeteTV page, and a current meeting agenda's own cover-page instructions. If anything here looks out of date, please let us know.