From Mayor Mark Sheldon
City government has many moving parts. In many ways, it is like a business with various service lines including administration, finance, police, fire public works, utilities, building and planning, community redevelopment, and parks and recreation.
Each and every department serves the residents, businesses and visitors of this community. While departments function individually, they act in tandem to fulfill the City’s vision, mission, and values.
As a reminder, our City’s vision is to be a safe, family-friendly vibrant community that values residents, businesses and visitors, supports cultural and economic diversity, and maintains outstanding quality of life.
This vision is accomplished day by day, and year by year, through adherence to our six strategic priorities. These include public safety, economic development, transportation, community quality of life, attractive community and financial health.
These priorities are being addressed in our 2024 budget, just approved in September. While it is our largest budget to date, with $236 million in expenditures, a whopping 62 percent of this budget – $146 million – is for capital improvements. We are addressing all our strategic priorities in this year’s expenditures.
Our capital projects consist of many large, multi-year projects that have been in our long-range plans for a while. The process of designing, bidding, crossing all our T’s & dotting all the I’s when it comes to government contracts, can be arduous. It doesn’t happen overnight, but we are pleased that these much-needed projects continue to move forward.
These include significant investment in one of our strategic priorities – public safety. We have set aside funding for two new fire stations, a fire training tower, a new K9 training facility, and a police substation on the east end. The majority of our General Fund expenditures – 58 percent – is going to public safety.
Wanting to focus on quality of life, we will see many new amenities and improvements coming to Frank Brown Park. These include a community center with a safe room, a new connector road, stormwater improvements, new restrooms and a pavilion for the Miracle League, a skate park, four new basketball courts, improvements to the tennis courts and more. As the City grows, and we attract more and more special events and tournaments, we must continue to invest in Frank Brown Park, one of our greatest recreational assets.
But we are not ignoring our all-important infrastructure, as we are putting just under $48 million into road construction which addresses our transportation strategic priority. This includes the Front Beach Road Community Redevelopment Area (CRA) involving the current construction at the roundabout on Front Beach and multiple new segments east to Richard Jackson. We are also addressing the needs of connector roads like Powell Adams and Alf Coleman. This budget also includes nearly $27 million for stormwater projects, including the Lullwater Outfall. There are also 10 million-dollar projects that address our future water and sewer needs, including the expansion of our septic to sewer project in Laguna Beach and increasing capacity at the Wastewater Treatment Plant. These help us support economic development as well.
The volume of projects we have is truly too much to recount here. I encourage you to examine our budget, which is posted on our websites. And if you have any questions or concerns, please reach out and ask.
As a member of the governing body of Panama City Beach, we always want to be transparent in how we spend City funds and responsive to your concerns.
