Bay County Commissioners Oppose House and Senate Bills
BAY COUNTY, Fla. (WMBB) – Community Redevelopment agencies allow cities to identify blighted sections of town, withhold the property taxes from those properties, then use the money to revitalize the area.
The hope is to attract businesses. Improve infrastructure, create jobs and affordable housing, all while boosting the local economy.
But the state legislature is considering a bill that would limit community redevelopment agencies from performing certain actions or terminate them all together.
During Tuesday's Bay County commission meeting, board members approved of a resolution opposing the House and Senate companion bills.
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'We want to see that CRA and the other CRA's in Bay County are being successful. We want to see them to be completed in accordance with the plans that are published. And we think there are some things in this legislation that would inhibit that and prevent that from happening,' County Manager Bob Majka said.
Oddly enough, Bay County had been at odds with Panama City Beach over the beach's CRA.A few years ago, beach officials renewed the taxing district until 2049, costing the county millions of dollars in property tax revenue. Last summer the two sides worked out a compromise, capping CRA revenues at $30 million a year.
It could save Bay County $2.7 billion in the next 25 years.
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'Nobody expected the growth in the property taxes like what we've experienced. And so it is the current seat holders, those on the city commission out there, the Mayor, the City Manager, as well as those of us are sitting at the county commission to work together to try to make sure that we put the proper guardrails in place that allows both the Panama City Beach City government to be able to operate,' Commissioner Doug Moore said.
The House Bill is currently in commerce committee, and the Senate Bill is on the committee agenda.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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The technology these founders have created has effectively dissolved any sense of shared reality by allowing anyone to create and propagate alternate realities which leads to the unraveling of the global order. But more interesting than the consequences of this technology, which we are in many ways already aware of, is the way in which the founders have isolated themselves from their own reality, both intentionally and unintentionally. After about 30 mins of dialogue laced in the idiomatic gibberish of Silicon Valley … 'first principles' .. 'post-human'… 'decel' … 'p(doom)' … 'game theory' … 'chunky numbers' … you realize these characters have nothing meaningful to say to each other, whether socially or in response to the global catastrophe they helped create. While there is a tinge of the tragic in their inability to communicate emotionally with each other, there is also something powerful in the artifice of their language, which protects them from having to meaningfully take responsibility for their actions. Viewing the potential collapse of the world through their screens, a vantage point from which nothing can be known for certain, the artificiality of their language lends an artificiality to the events, regardless of whether or not they are really happening. The collapse of a country's economy gets referred to as 'de minimis,' news of the mayor of Paris's assassination becomes an example of the 'compound distillation effect of the content.' But when the four characters end up bunkered in the basement, erroneously fearing retaliation from Iran's Revolutionary Guard, it's clear that they are as susceptible to the fake reality their technology has created as any of its users. 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