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Panama City CRA staff propose moving from flat fee to 10% administrative charge; commissioners call for benchmarks and tracking
Summary
Staff proposed replacing a long-standing flat administrative charge to the CRAs with a 10% administrative fee tied to revenues. Commissioners asked for benchmarking against third-party administrators, a phased approach, and more transparent time-tracking of city staff work supporting CRAs before approving a large one-year jump.
City staff proposed changing how the Panama City Community Redevelopment Agencies are charged for city administrative services. For the last 13 years the CRAs have paid a flat $125,000 per year; staff recommended moving to a percentage-based administrative fee set at 10% of CRA revenues.
Deputy CRA Executive Director Brandy outlined services the fee would support, including HR, IT, facility maintenance, accounting, engineering support on projects and public affairs. Brandy said the 10% figure was informed by a common federal de minimis 10% administrative standard and work staff has done to measure increased service demand as CRA projects expanded. “...we came across this admin fee that hadn't been changed in 13 years, and we knew we wanted to look at that. ... A best practice with other grants is 10% of revenues,” Brandy said.
Commissioners responded that the jump — staff estimated the 10% fee would raise administrative billing from the long-standing $125,000 to about $357,000 total across CRAs — is large, and they requested further analysis before approval. Commissioner Street described the proposed single-year increase as “triple” the current flat charge and asked for benchmarking and competitive bids or quotes from third-party administrators. Several commissioners recommended collecting external quotes as a sanity check and tracking internal staff time dedicated to CRA work. Commissioner Granger proposed a simple time-tracking spreadsheet to record hours staff spend on CRA business so the city can quantify how much general fund work subsidizes CRA operations. Commissioner Lucas noted that third-party administrators would not necessarily deliver all services staff currently provides (for example, some in-house maintenance), so benchmarks should account for the services mix.
Staff and several commissioners outlined possible alternatives: phase in an increase (for example, to 5% this year and higher later), calculate the administrative charge based on CRA expenditures rather than revenues, or keep the flat fee while implementing fractional accounting to track actual staff time against each CRA’s workload. Commissioner Hughes and Mayor Branch supported collecting external quotes; Commissioner Street and others requested at least one third-party estimate and clearer internal time-allocation data before approving a large immediate increase.
Ending: Staff agreed to (1) provide further benchmarking information and at least one third-party quote for comparable CRA administration services and (2) implement or propose a method for tracking staff hours spent on CRA work so the board can evaluate a fee change with more data. No formal fee change was adopted in the workshop.
