Columbia Capital Improvement Sales Tax interview: John Ogan, Columbia Public Works

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

The following is the full transcript from an interview ABC 17 News report Gabrielle Teiner conducted with Columbia Public Works spokesman John Ogan.

Gabrielle Teiner: ​​So I'm just gonna have you state your name, spell it, and your job title. 

John Ogan: My name is John Ogan. It's spelled J o h n ,  O g a n, and I'm the public information specialist for the City of Columbia Public Works Department. 

Teiner: Great. How long have you been in this position? 

Ogan: Between two-and-three years.

Teiner: Fabulous. Great. So my first question is, if the sales tax is approved, what will it go towards? 

Ogan: So this is a capital improvement sales tax and I want to stress that it's a renewal of an existing tax and not a new tax but, what these go towards are capital projects, which are large scale, uh, projects that serve to improve, uh, livability in the community, to improve public safety, uh, to build facilities that, uh, enable, uh, fire police and public works to do the work that they need to do to bring services to the community in a more efficient manner. 

Teiner: Great. So. I see there are lots of road projects specifically on there's, 75% of the C-I-S-T is going towards public works. Why does public works need all that money?

Ogan: Well, capital improvements uh they typically are, are public works uh, uh, of a public works nature, such as roads and sidewalks and, uh, things that, that, improve the the traffic flow and safety. We look at everything with a, a, safety viewpoint. So when we, we, see that, uh the town is developing in a certain direction, we have to provide improved facilities to, to, enable traffic flow to reach that area. So we've got a lot of projects planned. Um, most of them are are roads, uh, such as widening roads, adding roundabouts to improve, traffic flow and improve traffic safety, adding bike lanes, um um adding sidewalks around town. So there, there's a never ending, uh, um, stream of projects that we can, uh, accomplish. And they're brought to our attention by, by, different citizens or by the council and, we can use these capital improvement sales tax funds to accomplish some of those projects just to, uh, improve livability, to improve safety within the community, and just to make better neighborhoods that that people can travel between more easily, more effectively, and overall more safely. 

Teiner: Great so, you already touched upon how this will help the city, and you said it's going to help with, um, just livability and life lifestyle around town, growing the community. So there are a couple of specific projects I want to ask you questions about. And that includes, let's talk first about the Clark Lane improvements, that has an estimated cost of $7.3 million.

Ogan: So for Clark Lane, that's a very popular area, and it's going to be made more popular when MoDOT improves I-70 and Highway 63 as well. It's going to bring more traffic onto Clark Lane, and we want to have the facilities there to match that, improve traffic. furthermore, there's been a number of pedestrian fatality crashes there, and we want to make sure that Clark Lane is able to accommodate not just the increased vehicular traffic, but the increased number of pedestrians. We want them to be safe. Overall, safety drives all of the projects that we create and the Clark Lane one, we're going to widen the road, provide a turn lane in the middle, improve, uh, curbs and gutters and provide better facilities for people to walk there. And if people should choose to bike there, we want to have bike lanes present. So overall, we know safety is a concern on Clark Lane. It's only going to increase, increase, with MoDOT’s highway project. So we want to uh be able to to meet that increased demand by, uh, one of the more expensive projects on this list.  

Teiner: Great and how about the New Haven Road improvements at a $6.9 million estimated cost?

Ogan: Can I can I just look up, for just a moment? Of course yes, I, yes. So, so, with the New Haven Road, uh, and and some of the, uh, this is toward the east part of town, like um, East Saint Charles Road, Richland Road, New Haven Road. We see a lot of developments coming in that area. So we want to have the roads there in order to meet the increased demand from those developments. And, and also for the roads to be able to handle the increased traffic flow and, and perhaps for people to be able to choose bicycles. as, as the, uh community develops. But, the is developing in that direction. So we just want to have, roads and sidewalks there to, to meet that demand once it arrives. 

Teiner: And how about the Saint Charles Road improvements into Richland? Estimated cost $9.8 million .

Ogan: That's another significant one. We're seeing more development out east, and it's going to bring more traffic, uh in the eastern direction. And, and that intersection, it's it's unusual. It's a curved road and then you have a road that approaches it and I think we can we can improve that intersection a great deal with capital improvements, sales tax funds, so it's just something if voters would like to see improvements of that nature, they can consider, um, their vote for it. 

Teiner: Great. How about, let's talk about the Sinclair road improvements, estimated cost $12.1 million dollars.

Ogan: Sinclair Road, there's a new development going there and we also have, I think, three schools total in that area. We've got Mill Creek and we've got, the new elementary school and the middle school so, uh we really want to have safety in place for in that direction, so uh, I think anyone who, who, who has been emailing us lately about, uh, concerns for crosswalks in that area, they're going to know that as that area is developed, it's going to have an increased, uh, traffic flow. And we have to we have to consider um building up that area if we want every thing to be safe. So it's just something for people to consider if they, they would like to see improved facilities. Now, if the tax does not pass, we'll still have funds from other areas and we may prioritize it. um above some of the other projects, just because safety is such a concern. Safety really drives everything that we do. uh but uh, the capital improvement sales tax may enable us to do, uh more than, than what we, we could do with some of the existing taxes. 

Teiner: Great. And you mentioned that you said you think you got emails about this road, correct? So with that, how, a lot of these project ideas kind of started as public input? 

Ogen: Yes. I think we started with, 66 projects was the total. And uh we kind of prioritized those based on a number of factors. Some of those factors are are safety and uh environment and climate, as well as, using a highway manual to kind of guide our process. Uh but we prioritized some over others. but they do come to us from the citizenry. Or perhaps a council member brings it up and they asked public Works to do, to do a traffic flow analysis in that area. And and they do. And um so we, we take that initial list of 66 projects and we say here, here's 25 that we could do over the next ten year period if the capital improvement sales tax was uh passed. 

Teiner: Great. Awesome. So talk to me about some of these maintenance projects. I see there's like the Smiley Lane maintenance, State Farm Parkway major maintenance. Give me a little insight as to what those are. 

Ogen: We do a number of surface-level improvements throughout the year, and you can see those going on right now here in July. People are uh with Columbia, are, are repaving roads, but sometimes a simple surface treatment won't do and for a case like State Farm, if you look at the road there, it's it's a little beat up. So, uh, simple resurfacing may not do so, we may need to make a major road project to dig out the base and start over again and so these kinds of projects are the kinds of things that are on the capital improvement sales tax. If people want to consider their vote for them. It, it, may be something that's that serves the public needs in the uh over the ten-year period. 

Teiner: Great. And now under maintenance operation projects, I see there are renovations to the Grissom building happening, and that's going to cost about estimated cost of $7.4 million. What would those renovations include? 

Ogen: The Grissum Building is a very old building. It's where we headquarter, uh, public works vehicles and staff and if you would simply go in there, you would see that it's a building from another time. Uh, we would like to improve safety and quality of materials there. And, and, just to serve the the, the, community needs. So we would have uh more improved uh uh truck parking, more asphalt creation abilities. There's any number of things that could be improved over the Grissom Building, and we would love to see those occur, uh, some other maintenance concerns. Is like the the north, salt dome. That was built, I think, 20 years ago, and it was state of the art at the time but, there's a lot of advancements in the field of uh snow and ice removal that could be implemented since then and that would improve, uh, winter weather services to the community during winter and, road improvements throughout the rest of the year. So maintenance is, is a big concern for us. But also we would take capital improvement funds to create a new municipal center on the south side that would allow more people to enjoy faster, uh snow and ice removal services. we only have the one snow and ice center on the north side. If we added another on the south side, we would have the ability to uh improve our services all over. 

Teiner: Yes, because I do see the construction on South Dome on Sinclair, on as well.

Ogan: That's true, with the current ten-year, uh, sales tax, we would take money from that and build the foundation of it but, for the next ten-year period, we're asking voters to look at that, and we would take funds from the next 10-year period and improve other aspects of it so initially, it would, it would, be simply a center where, where trucks could go and refill their, their, salt, and then go out and provide better services to the community but, with uh the capital improvement sales tax over the next ten years, we could envision it being, just like another Grissum Building where workers could, could base themselves and improve other services, not just snow and ice removal and uh have a faster response time throughout the community. 

Teiner: Great, so some of these improvement projects I'm seeing down at the bottom, there are some traffic calming, traffic safety projects but, it says there are city, county, and state projects and that's citywide for $5 million. Could you go into what those are? 

Ogan: I'm sorry that I didn't prepare for that for this meeting. I think if I spoke to an engineer, I could get more information on that. so. I'm sorry, but after this ends, I could certainly find out more about that for you.

Teiner: That's OK, no big deal.

Ogan: We do work with other agencies, such as MoDOT and the county to like, for example um down at route KK, which is a state facility, but it intersects with one of our roads and we're putting a roundabout there. So we're working with MoDOT to split the costs of that roundabout half and half, so it may be of that nature, working with local agencies to split the cost of things that are on shared facilities. 

Teiner: OK, so, so if the sales if the capital improvement sales tax is not approved, how could this hinder public work's ability to do all these projects? 

Ogan: Well, we would still do all the things that we normally do with our general operating budget. We would still take care of uh snow and ice removal on the roads. We would still fill potholes on city roads, we would still uh do general paving and and and many maintenance concerns. But some of the larger capital projects, we we might not accomplish as many as we envision with this plan. There would still be funds from some other sources uh such as uh the county road tax, a variety of other sources so we could accomplish some of the capital improvement projects, but we would probably go to council and say uh we're operating with a lower amount of money. Which of these would you like us to prioritize? And we would hear what council said. Alternatively, we could uh adjust the, the, the plan and go back to the voters and say, well uh it didn't pass the first time, but we made these modifications. Would you consider it in this form in a in a future year? So there's a number of options, but we would still stay busy, just not with as many capital projects as we had hoped. 

Teiner: Gotcha, So what would you say to a voter who is kind of on the fence about some of these projects, or is thinking, I don't I don't necessarily want this to pass? Like, what would you say to someone in that situation?

Ogan: Well, it's absolutely up to the voter that they I just ask them to educate themselves. We've set up a website to allow folks to educate themselves. It's at como.gov/cist that stands for capital improvement sales tax. You can go there and just read, the public safety benefits from the tax. Read some of the livability benefits that might result from the tax.And it's up to every voter to decide if they want those things.

Teiner: Of course. Yes. Great. So you have answered all of my questions. Is there anything else you'd like to say about the CIST?

Ogan: I, I don't think so. If approved, will pursue the projects. And we hope that increases livability and public safety. Everything that we do is with the safe uh safe systems approach in mind. So I I we just want to look at safety long term planning as, as the as the city grows, we want to be there to provide better facilities for, for to widen Nifong for Nifong is now two lanes in a certain area. We could widen that to four lanes because we see that traffic is increasing down there on Nifong, uh, we also want to add things like bicycle lanes to more streets um uh put in roundabouts can be polarizing, but it's true that they are there for safety uh with like a typical intersection you might have like, T-Bone accidents, head on accidents, a roundabout that that minimizes some of those uh extra, extra fatal accidents. Crashes we call them uh so you're always, more sideswiping accidents occur, but less, less head on. Fatal crashes occur. So everything that we do is is safety minded, and uh we appreciate uh voters just um educating themselves and um deciding whether or not this is something that they want to pursue. And, on August 6th, they can make their decision.