As the Tampa Rays kick off another season at Tropicana Field, hanging over the opening day festivities this year is the proposal to build a whole new stadium as part of a multi-billion-dollar redevelopment in St. Petersburg. Six months after the team and Mayor Ken Welch announced the Rays are “Here to Stay,” the deal is not done yet and we are already running into the first benchmark of the proposal’s timeline. When the announcement was made, it lined up a “public approval process” in Q1 of this year. That has not yet kicked off. At the center of the stadium saga is an aggressive benchmark, team leaders have said the preliminary agreement they’ve made with the city and developers is based on shovels getting in the ground by the end of this year. As lawyers work behind the scenes, there is a lot of discussion and votes left to happen regarding the $600+ million in public funding needed for the current proposal. $312.5 million is supposed to come from Pinellas County; The money would go towards just the new stadium, using funds from the so-called “bed/tourist tax.” The county board could very well be the first to take action on the plans in the coming months, so 10 Tampa Bay asked all seven county commissioners if the vote happened today, would they approve of the spending plan? MORE: https://www.wtsp.com/article/sports/mlb/rays/rays-stadium-deal/67-ba72aede-a677-4fbd-9959-4cec4f611962 ►Subscribe: https://on.wtsp.com/youtube ►Website: https://www.wtsp.com/ ►Facebook: https://facebook.com/10TampaBay ►X: https://twitter.com/10TampaBay