I'm not on the ground there, so maybe they do? But he was contradicting what other relevant officials were saying. I know albaby lives in FL, so maybe he could comment if DeSantis was correct, or if he was insisting people should make up their own minds.

I'd have to see what he said.

The city has ordered evacuations only for certain areas. Again, it's the water that's usually the deadly part of the storm. So if you're in an area that's at low risk from storm surge and flooding, you can usually shelter in that area - either in your home if it's secure enough, or by going to a nearby shelter.

The corollary to that is that even if you are in an evacuation zone, you probably don't need to travel a very long distance to get to an adequate shelter. You don't need to flee to Georgia. If you get away from where the storm surge and other flooding might reach you, then that's probably far enough. The below link is to the city's evacuation zone map - they've ordered evacuations of zones A and B:

hillsborough.maps.arcgis.com: ArcGIS Web Application

It looks like those zones are only a few miles wide - so even if you're in one of those two zones, you probably don't need to travel more than a few miles before you're out of the evacuation area. So if you can find a safe shelter just outside of the evacuation zone, you might not need to travel very far.