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What will it take to save the bus system

Two things:

  1. $179 million
  2. Richland County and Columbia city councils agreeing on how to split that cost

Both are unlikely. The $179 million figure is enough to keep the buses running for the next 20 years at their current service levels. There are several ways to come up with that money:

  1. A permanent, county wide mass transit fee. This fee would be paid with your car taxes. It would be about $9 the first year and increase to about $36 the 20th year. County Council members hate the fee and have said they will not renew it, which leaves the option of:
  2. A permanent vehicle registration fee. This is similar to a mass transit fee, but it would be operated by both Columbia and Richland County. The problem is that only 25 percent of all cars are registered in the county. That means Columbia residents would pay three times as much as county residents. It would be difficult for City Council members to approve that, which leaves the option of:
  3. Property taxes. Voters would have to approve this, which means they would have to approve a property tax increase (which is unlikely). Even if it did pass, state law will only let local governments raise their property taxes so much every year. The city wouldn’t be able to raise the taxes enough to cover the cost of the bus system, which means they would have to cut out other things - like money for police, fire and garbage pick up.

The other option would be for local governments to ask voters to approve a sales tax increase, with the extra money going to pay for the bus service. The earliest this could go on the ballot would be Nov. 2, 2010. The money wouldn’t be available until mid 2011. Until then, local governments would have to come up with about $8 million to keep the buses running.

Either way, the CMRTA board needs to know what to do. Columbia Mayor Bob Coble, who also serves on the CMRTA board, has set an April 15 deadline. The joint Richland County/Columbia committee will meet again on Jan. 16.

Posted in Columbia city government. Tagged with , .

Sex offender restrictions in Columbia

There’s something about the midlands (or maybe just Lexington County) that loves to pass sex offender restrictions. Out of the entire state, only three cities have passed ordinances that ban registered sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of schools or day cares. All of them are in Lexington County. But Columbia could join them Wednesday if this ordinance is passed.

You can read more about this issue in today’s newspaper.

Posted in Columbia city government. Tagged with .

Another meeting to save the buses

Columbia and Richland County council members have met at least twice to come up with a way to keep the bus system from running out of money in June. So far, they haven’t decided anything. But they will meet again tomorrow at 10 a.m. in the CMRTA conference room.

To read the agenda, click here.

We’ve written lots of stories about this, including this one - which should bring you up to speed if you’re not sure what’s going on. The meeting tomorrow is important because for the first time Joe Cronin, Richland County’s research manager, will tell council members exactly how much money the bus system needs to operate for the next two years or the next 20 years.

Council members have to decide how they will proceed. One option is to come up with some interim funding (the two year option) until 2010, when council members can ask voters to approve a sales tax increase that would pay for the bus system. The other (20 year) option is to find a new funding source for the buses altogether. But those choices are complex and controversial. One plan is to ask lawmakers to change state law so local governments can use hospitality taxes to pay for public transportation. The hospitality industry (hotels, restaurants) would fight that law change to the death. Another option is to use property taxes to pay for the bus system, but that would require reconstituting the CMRTA, which would require another referendum.

Posted in Columbia city government. Tagged with .

$50,000 for the Black Expo

It was a little strange when Columbia’s Black Expo did not get any hospitality tax money this year. The event, which features exhibits, entertainment and motivational speakers, uses the money to advertise. But during the application process, their finances had not been audited, which made the hospitality tax committee nervous. In a rare move, the tax committee decided to hold $50,000 in reserve for the Black Expo and release it once the audited numbers were available - which they were on December 17. Council members approved it, and the Black Expo got their $50,000.

“They did not want to put their stamp on it without proper documentation,” said Libby Gober, who manages the hospitality tax fund for the city. “But they showed their commitment to the expo by saving the money for them.”

Posted in Columbia city government. Tagged with , .

The property tax question

In case you haven’t noticed, the economy isn’t doing so well. The big question for local governments, including Columbia, is how will that impact the lifeblood of the city - property tax collections. The thinking is if people don’t have money, they might not pay - or wait to pay - their property taxes. The majority of those taxes, 70 percent according to Richland County Treasurer David Adams, are supposed to come in this month. If they don’t, that’s not good for local governments. Columbia officials have already prepared a 5 percent across the board budget cut, just in case. Whether they use those cuts depends on who property taxes are collected this month.

In this email to Mayor Bob Coble, Adams said he believes the impact on tax collections will be small.

Mr. Mayor

Property tax collections have been fairly consistent so far. Through November, we’ve collected 18.16 % of what has been levied for 08-09 - that includes the County and all subdivisions - last year at the same time we’d collected 20.37 % of what was levied. Not that far off, and when you include several big-ticket items that have (anticipated) delayed payments at the County level; we are very close to where we were last year.

That being said, we have mainly just dealt with vehicle taxes to this point.  As you are aware, over the next month, we will collect almost all real estate property taxes (and they are 70% of our annual property tax collections).  I do believe that we will see an increase in “delayed” payments on cars and some real property.  I expect that in mid-February we will know more about where we stand.

In our favor, it will be harder to cheat on car taxes because the state is changing vehicle tags this year – so it will be very easy to spot folks who haven’t paid (I could use your help with your meter-readers and other street staff to identify these, like the sheriff’s office has been able to do).  Second, real estate property tax delinquencies went up significantly last year, but by the time of our November tax sale only a negligible amount went uncollected.

The Act 388 assessable transfer of interest is absolutely killing people, but that is for another conversation.

For now, I believe the impact on property tax collections will be small (delayed collections, not uncollected revenue) – but we will need to discuss this again at the end of February.

Hope you all had a Happy Holiday!

All the Best,
David A. Adams
Treasurer, Richland County

Posted in Columbia city government. Tagged with , , .

Coming up next week

Columbia City Council members will be busy next week with the city manager’s evaluation, raising city employees health insurance costs and debating whether to restrict where sex offenders can live in Columbia.

Wednesday’s council meeting will be in the evening. They do this four times a year in each of the four council districts. These meetings are normally very light because council members don’t want to meet until midnight. But next week’s meeting is so full that council members have scheduled an additional work session at 1 p.m. so they can cram it all in. Here’s the schedule:

  • 11 a.m. Closed-door session at City Hall to complete City Manager Charles Austin’s evaluation.
  • 1 p.m. Work session at City Hall. You can read the full agenda by clicking here. This meeting will mostly focus on proposed changes to the city’s health insurance plan, which in 2007 cost taxpayers $15 million, nearly $8 million more than city officials had planned to spend. City employees can expect to pay more for their health insurance in 2009. In a second executive session, council members will get legal advice on the city’s smoking ban. The issue is whether the city can require restaurant owners to pay for no smoking signs.
  • 6 p.m. Regular council meeting at South Kilbourne Elementary School. You can read the full agenda by clicking here. The only big item is the last thing on the agenda, an ordinance that would prevent sex offenders from living within 1,000 feet of “any school, child care facility, church, playground, park, designated school bus stop, public pool, youth athletic facility or playing fields or courts or rinks, or neighborhood or youth center.” The ordinance would not require sex offenders to move if they already live here but would only apply to sex offenders who are trying to “establish a residence.” You can read the proposed ordinance by clicking here.

Posted in Columbia city government. Tagged with , , , , .

The $3 million consent agenda

Columbia City Council members use something called a consent agenda to approve things that they all agree on. It’s a time saving measure, more or less. That way the meetings are five hours instead of seven hours. But the consent agenda is where the majority of your tax dollars are spent every week - in the blink of an eye.

Take the December 17 meeting for example. Council members met for nearly five hours. They discussed the December 2008 employee of the month, the city’s MLK Day celebration, hospitality tax funding recommendations, a parking ordinance, audit committee schedule, appointments to three city commissions, three ordinances, five resolutions and five staff reports. The only money they spent was $50,000 for the hospitality tax funding.

But the consent agenda had 14 items on it, worth $3,542,920.23. They were all approved in the time it took the city clerk to call the roll. So what is on the consent agenda? It’s mostly equipment and construction. $10,000 for some heavy duty tools. $12,000 for security cameras at the police department. $1.8 million for emergency repair of a water tank.

Most of that money was budgeted for at the beginning of the fiscal year. That’s why it is on the consent agenda. But occasionally, something will get on the consent agenda that is controversial - just not with City Council members. On December 17, it was the approval of a parking study consultant contract for Five Points for $57,500 - which some people think is a waste of money.

We’ll try to keep you updated on the consent agenda each week.

Posted in Columbia city government. Tagged with .

Top 10 local government stories of 2008

Since everyone loves lists, we’ve decided to rank the top 10 local government stories of 2008. Please feel free to disagree with us, and let us know your Top 10 in the comments section.

Counting down:

10. Bernice Scott retires

The former welfare mom became one of the most powerful politicians in Richland County over her 20-year tenure on Richland County Council. But the first black chairwoman of the council did not get to leave like she wanted. At her next-to-last meeting, council members defeated a proposal to build a $3.1 million park in Lower Richland.

9. Public safety and the Columbia Police Department

After 48 officers left the department in 2007, council members began 2008 by voting to give officers an 18 percent pay raise. In March, City Manager Charles Austin chose Shelby, N.C., police chief Tandy Carter to take over the Columbia Police Department. Two weeks later, a council-appointed committee, led by former S.C. Supreme Court Chief Justice Ernest Finney, blasted police for underreporting crime to keep the city’s crime statistics low. Things did not get any better in September, when a USC student was raped near her Main Street apartment building. She later filed a complaint against the department, saying two male officers were pressuring her, including calling her parents and friends before she could tell them about the attack. But the department ended the year on a good note, gaining reaccreditation from the Commission on Accreditation of Law Enforcement Agencies. And Carter presented a well-received plan that would give officers a $10,000 bonus if they bought a house in a high-crime area of the city.

8. North Columbia

After two people were killed at the Gable Oaks Apartments in three months, City Manager Charles Austin declared that North Columbia was “a community in crisis.” City officials began cracking down on apartment complexes with crime problems, going so far as to propose an ordinance that would require all apartment complexes to install security cameras and hire private security guards. That proposal died, but the political momentum lead to another ordinance — this one requiring all rental property owners, even people who rent out rooms in their homes, to pay for a business license. City officials say this will help them track down absentee landlords who have lots of crime on their property. A public hearing for the proposal is scheduled Jan. 21.

7. Federal stimulus package

When Barack Obama was elected president in November, local governments across the country began racing to put together lists of their most needed infrastructure projects (streets, water and sewer systems, etc.) for a proposed federal bailout. Columbia Mayor Bob Coble went to Washington, D.C., twice to try to get some of Columbia’s $374 million in requests on the list. While Coble and other mayors, like Charleston’s Joe Riley, were working to get the federal money, South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford and Rep. Jim DeMint (R-Greenville) were working to keep the money from coming. Sanford and DeMint oppose the bailout because they believe it would burden taxpayers.

6. Belinda Gergel rides wave of historic preservation to Columbia City Council

After a 78-year-old farmhouse was demolished in the Heathwood neighborhood, Columbia’s neighborhood associations began a movement for zoning changes that would limit what could be torn down and built in neighborhoods. The controversy manifested itself in the race for Columbia’s District 3 seat, which was being vacated by Anne Sinclair. Belinda Gergel, a former college professor and neighborhood activist, supported the zoning changes. Brian Boyer, a homebuilder who was critical of the zoning changes, ran against her. The two raised record amounts of money and ran TV commercials - a first for a Columbia council district race. But District 3 has five historic neighborhoods, and on Election Day they powered Gergel to a decisive victory.

5. Columbia finances

For two years, Columbia was behind on its bookkeeping. With no audited numbers, city officials could not say for sure how much money they had and how much they were spending. The point was reinforced in July, when city officials discovered they had spent $18 million more than they had budgeted for employee health care. In August, the city got back on schedule when it closed the books for the 2007 fiscal year. But council members could be forced to cut the budget in early 2009 if business license fees and property taxes fall short. City officials have prepared an across-the-board, 5-percent cut, but council members are likely to modify that if they choose to cut the budget.

4. Homeless shelter

After Columbia officials failed to build a comprehensive homeless shelter, a group of business leaders, service providers and pastors got together to build one themselves. The Midlands Housing Alliance announced in June it had received a $10 million Knight Foundation grant to put a homeless shelter on Main Street. A group of five downtown neighborhoods immediately organized to fight the shelter and started pressuring City Council. City Council members offered to help the MHA pay for the shelter, but only if they moved it off Main Street. The MHA refused, and council decided not to help them. Richland County Council, on the other hand, chipped in $100,000 toward a new shelter. But the MHA has a long road ahead. An attorney in the Cottontown neighborhood unsuccessfully appealed to the city’s Board of Zoning Appeals to stop the shelter. The Elmwood Park Neighborhood Association has hired an attorney and sued the MHA.

3. Smoking bans

When the South Carolina Supreme Court upheld the city of Greenville’s smoking ban in March, it cleared the way for local governments across the state to enact their own smoking bans. Columbia City Council members had narrowly passed a smoking ban in 2006 that exempted bars. That ban looked poised to go into effect until May, when Councilman E.W. Cromartie announced he was switching his vote to a full ban. That gave anti-smoking advocates a majority on the council, and an ordinance banning smoking in all work places went into effect Oct. 1. Richland County followed suit. Lexington County appeared poised to do the same thing, but eventually decided to let restaurant owners choose.

2. Paying for buses

The Central Midlands Regional Transit Authority, which operates the area’s bus system, could have to shut down in June 2009 because local government officials could not agree who should pay for it. Richland County had been paying for the system on an interim basis through a fee added to car taxes. A county-sponsored transportation committee proposed a 1-cent sales tax referendum, part of which would have paid for the buses for 10 years. But council members voted to not put the question on the ballot, saying they could not endorse a plan to raise the sales tax while the economy was struggling. Since then, Columbia and Richland County leaders have met several times, trying to come up with a way to keep the bus system afloat. Their best idea is to get state lawmakers to change the state’s hospitality tax law so they can use hospitality taxes to pay for the buses. That’s a long shot. The hospitality industry - a powerful special interest group - has vowed to aggressively fight any change in the law.

1. Gaston

What was once a sleepy Lexington County town woke up in 2008. It started in January, when Gaston residents heard this message when they called the town’s police department:

“We are laid off until further notice. Do not leave a message.”

Two weeks later, Mayor Larry Sharpe abruptly resigned, citing health problems. At the time, the town was being investigated by SLED. They owed the IRS $200,000 in penalties for years of not paying payroll taxes. In April, Sharpe - along with the town’s former administrator and clerk - were arrested and accused of taking more than $5,000 in public money. In December, The State’s Clif LeBlanc reported that Lexington County Councilman Jim Kinard and his employer, First Palmetto Savings Bank, made loans barred by state law to Gaston. Two weeks later, LeBlanc found that “records show an unraveling scandal involving a small network of families who prospered as the growing, working-class town of 1,400 drowned in red ink.” All three Gaston council members have opposition in the Jan. 20 election.

Posted in Columbia city government.

Party ’til the break of 9 p.m.

Columbia’s official New Year’s Eve celebration is tonight at Finlay Park, from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. Some streets will be closed. They are:

From 1 p.m. to 10 p.m.

From 5 p.m. to 10 p.m.

Posted in Columbia city government.

Richland administrator gets kudos — and a raise

Administrator Milton Pope got his first evaluation by Richland County Council on Tuesday night, including a raise and a three-month contract extension. Council members then released this statement:

The members of Richland County Council are committed to providing their constituents with a local government that is responsive, provides high quality services and does so in an economically responsible way.  The Council is committed to ensuring that both it and the County Administration are accountable to the Public.  Hiring, directing and evaluating the County Administrator is an important aspect of governing the County in line with those principles. In fulfilling these roles, the Council met in Executive Session during November and December 2008 meetings, for the purpose of completing and discussing Milton Pope’s performance evaluation for 2007 and 2008.

The Council has worked with Mr. Pope to implement an evaluation process which is designed to ensure the adoption and achievement of goals designed to improve Richland County.  This is being done in conjunction with the implementation of the County’s Strategic Plan.  During the evaluation process, each Council member met individually with the Administrator and discussed his performance with him on a matrix which included ten areas.  These areas included Strategic Leadership, Personnel Management, Fiscal and Procurement Management, Planning, Organizing and Goal Setting, Team Leadership, Analytical Thinking, Continuous Improvement, Initiative, Professionalism, Problem Solving and Problem Solving and Decision Making.  At this time, we are pleased to report that Mr. Pope received an overall average score of 3.0 on a 4.0 scale for his performance as County Administrator During 2007 and 2008.

Every Council member expressed confidence in Mr. Pope’s Fiscal Management, Analytical Thinking, Initiative, Professionalism and Problem Solving Skills.  The Council has discussed suggestions for improvement in areas providing customer service in several County Departments.  The Council further expressed confidence in Mr. Pope’s leadership and professionalism.  The Council is pleased with Mr. Pope’s leadership in the Council’s efforts to manage County services in a period of unusual growth and fiscal circumstances coupled with problems relating to incomplete implementation by the Legislature of Home Rule.  The Council shares Mr. Pope’s desire that Richland County continue to improve its operations and service to residents in a number of areas. We are confident that the administration has an effective plan to address existing issues.  We believe Mr. Pope to be a hands-on Administrator who has an established record and reputation of high personal integrity.  We know that he is committed to the success of Richland County.

Accordingly, the Council commends Mr. Pope on a good evaluation and a job well done.  While both the Council and Mr. Pope recognize that excellence is a journey requiring continued improvement; the Council is pleased with his performance to date and with the current direction of his leadership.

Presently, Mr. Pope has one and a half years remaining on his employment contract with the County.  His current salary is $150,000.  In an effort to recognize his performance and the fact that he has not had any increases in salary in almost two years, the Council has authorized an amendment to the Administrator’s employment contract as follows:  increasing his annual compensation by 5.00%, an amount less than that received by County Employees over the tenure of his employment. This amount is at the request of the Administrator who has expressed his desire to “share the burden” personally where economic times are tough. This will raise his annual salary to $157,500.  The approved amendment also  extends his contract for an additional two years, through June 30, 2012.  The Council also passed a motion to allow a salary comparison to be conducted prior to his next annual evaluation.

The Council regrets that current budgetary constraints prohibit additional compensation at this time which would allow Mr. Pope and many of our other high-performing employees’ compensation at a level commensurate with their demonstrated abilities and the market value of those abilities.

Val Hutchinson
Acting Council Chairman

December 30, 2008

Posted in Richland County Government. Tagged with , .


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