PANAMA CITY — The Panama City Community Redevelopment Agency Board (CRA), made up of city commissioners, approved a $100,000 payment for a Residential Assistance Program, but not before some scathing criticism.
The Residential Assistance Program is a partnership between the city Community Development department, Habitat for Humanity, Council on Aging and Gulf Power designed to help low-income senior citizens in the Downtown North CRA district with repairs to their homes. City Commissioner John Kady, who voted no, in particular does not see enough of a commitment from other organizations for the project.
“The main purpose of the CRA is to reduce blight. The CRA needs to pinpoint places that need help. You’re turning into an organization that hands out money,” he said. “I haven’t seen a less efficient organization at spending money than our community development organization. There’s a lot of other organizations that do this more efficiently.”
The Community Development Department is responsible for application of State Housing Initiatives Partnership funding, worth about $170,000 per year that go toward low-income housing, an issue Kady has railed against previously.
Commissioner Kenneth Brown defended the program, which was part of an initiative he helped create. Part of Kady’s critique was that visible blight on a main thoroughfare like Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard is more important than areas in residential seclusion.
“The houses in the community need to be fixed up, too,” Brown said.
Mayor Greg Brudnicki said he wanted to see the CRA’s allocation matched by the other organizations to at least $200,000 worth of work.
“All the other groups are supposed to donate 50 percent,” Brudnicki said.
It was unclear Tuesday what the other groups would contribute to the program.
Police
The CRA board also approved $348,076 for community policing within the CRA.
The funding pays for six officers within the four CRA districts. Police Chief Scott Ervin said those officers alone were responsible for 542 reports and answering 1,085 calls in the CRA last year. He added that one of the important duties of these officers is conducting field interviews with individuals that are not suspects or victims.
“That’s all about prevention,” he said. “Like I said, they are busy.”
What started as a presentation detailing the need for community policing turned into a show of support from the commission for the department’s work as a whole. This was in reaction to comments last week from local attorney Alvin Peters, a former candidate for mayor, that Panama City had become the murder capital of Florida.
“One week ago when that individual came before the commission, we should have jumped down his throat,” Kady said.
Ervin said per-capita statistics for crime were somewhat misleading because the department can serve 80,000 to 90,000 people per day with the amount of traffic driving through Panama City on highways U.S. 231 and 98 and State 77. He said while the murder rate is much higher than in previous years, violent crime is up 1.2 percent. The number of cases cleared by the department is at 69 percent, up from 59 percent two years ago.
“A report of this sort needs to come out,” Brown said.
Panama City Police Department has seven unfunded open positions. Ervin said he is considering hiring civilians to take over public information, grants and fleet and accreditation positions to allow those officers to work in the field.