Rep. Matt Gaetz was a no show at a town hall meeting Wednesday night meant to highlight local candidates' views on sea level rise, despite organizers saying the congressman had confirmed he would be attending.

The Tidal Town Hall was hosted by ReThink Energy Florida, nonprofit group that advocates for renewable energy, and First Street Foundation, a nonprofit that advocates for solutions to sea level rise.

Tidal Town Halls have been held across the state of Florida with participation from candidates of both parties.

Pensacola's Tidal Town Hall held Wednesday night at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Pensacola featured a non-partisan race with the two Pensacola mayor candidates, Grover Robinson and Brian Spencer, and a partisan race with County Commission District 2 candidates, Republican incumbent Doug Underhill and Democratic challenger Scott Trotter.

Gaetz's Democratic challenger Jennifer Zimmerman took the stage next to his empty chair when it was time for the congressional candidates to answer questions.

"I recognize the problem that we have with sea level rise," Zimmerman said. "I'm running for the House of Representatives because as you can tell our incumbent does not care."

After receiving confirmation from Gaetz that he'd be attending, event organizer Ally Duffy with ReThink Energy Florida told the News Journal she had not received any other communication from Gaetz or his office that he would not be attending.

The event was advertised online that Gaetz would be attending.

Gaetz did not respond to the News Journal's request for comment Wednesday night, but was photographed in the spin room at the Florida gubernatorial debate at Broward College in Davie speaking to the media as a surrogate for Ron DeSantis.

In 2017, Gaetz joined the Climate Solutions Caucus, a bipartisan group of lawmakers that believes in climate change and is committed to working to find a solution.

The other candidates at the town hall answered questions on local government policies dealing with sea level rise.

Before the candidates took the stage, a video from First Street Foundation was played that illustrated if a Category 3 storm hit Escambia County today 12,261 properties would be damaged from storm surge. That number is only expected to grow over the next 20 years.

Both Pensacola mayoral candidates agreed that proper building codes needed to address properties that could flood. Both candidates also pointed to their records on the issue.

Robinson said he picked the restoration of Carpenters Creek as a RESTORE Act project while on the County Commission because it will help deal with flooding in the entire basin. He also said more attention is needed on the proposed Ninth Avenue bridge replacement over the creek.

"We need to work now to make sure that bridge is wide enough to take care of the challenges coming underneath and it's not going to pinch things and create more volume flush through there when we have higher rain events," Robinson said. "These are things we need to be addressing."

Spencer said he held a symposium in the wake of the 2014 floods on what the city needed to do to address stormwater and said the Delano basin needs to be addressed to stop flood waters from funneling into the downtown area.

The county's new jail project, which Robinson as a County Commissioner approved, creates a new stormwater holding area meant to address flooding at the start of the Delano basin.

"That basin funnels every bit of the water into the city," Spencer said. "Until that basin, which has just been re-engineered, just drawn up, until that is executed we will not have taken care of the source of the problem."

During the District 2 portion of the town hall, Trotter said the county needed to protect wetlands and alleged Underhill was in the pocket of Perdido Key developers who want to build a town center under the Perdido Key Master Plan.

"We need someone that's going to stand up to developers and protect our wetlands," Trotter said.

Underhill pushed back, saying that after the 2014 flood when he came on the board the county implemented 100-year flood rules for development after years of only having regulations requiring developers to adhere to the much lower standard for a 25-year flood.

"That came with push back from the developers, push back that really fell on deaf ears because we were going to do the right thing," Underhill said.

Jim Little can be reached at jwlittle@pnj.com and 850-208-9827.