City of Columbia working to address economic fallout of MU budget cuts

University of Missouri officials announced Tuesday they were eliminating about 50 jobs in addition to several other departmental changes in their expected budget cuts.

The cuts are in response to the larger than expected drop in enrollment for the 2016-2017 school year.

City of Columbia leaders are now working to address those cuts and come up with positive solutions to the impact the cuts will have on the local economy.

Columbia Chamber of Commerce President Matt McCormick said the university is probably the biggest economic driver in the state and so it’s the number one priority for local leaders to come up with solutions sooner rather than later.”

“We took down a joint resolution from us (the chamber), the city, the county and the school district about our support for our university,” he said. “We are one community, we’re in this together. We’re going to work together to come up with the best solution.”

He said they’re waiting to get final numbers from the university that would include the total number of jobs that will be cut, but they’re still working with the university and its economic development department.

“We have a worst case scenario,” he said. “We’re working on those numbers and what that means, how far is this going to reach through ancillary jobs within our community.”

So leaders know there will be an impact but they’re not sure at this point what that impact will be or how serious it could become.

“It could affect housing, it could affect the number of students in our schools, it could affect businesses and jobs and student employment,” he said. “It affects a number of different areas.”

Columbia mayor-elect Brian Treece said he has reached out not only to the university, but also to the president of the Regional Economic Development Inc, or REDI, to find out how to address the expected trickle down effect.

“This is going to have a dramatic impact on Columbia’s economy in terms of potential layoffs, the decline in student enrollment, how the city plans for growth,” he said. “I think we have to take all of that into account.”

McCormick said the impact will be felt long-term and they don’t want to lose sight of that.

“That’s something we’re watching and being very proactive with,” he said.

McCormick said he’s reached out to his counterpart in State College where Penn State is located to find out how the city dealt with the fallout from the Sandusky scandal a few years ago.

“Asked how did they go about working with their university and working with their community,” he said. “Talked about how they approached some things and what did they see as their impact when they went through the crisis that they had a couple of years ago.”

Both McCormick and Treece confirm the city has been at the state capitol with university leaders, lobbying state legislators to stop budget cuts to the school.

“The first thing we can do is work with our legislators in Jefferson City to make sure that we stop the hemorrhaging in respect to state budget cuts,” Treece said.

Treece also said there needs to be significant work put into improving the image of the school as well as making sure the downtown housing bubble doesn’t burst.

“No one is going to make money when these facilities are 85 percent occupied. If they don’t fill them in the first year, I think the student migration pattern is such that that they will never be filled,” he said. “I do think you have to have a close look on future growth and to make sure that we’re not contributing to collapse of our housing market.”

McCormick said they’re working to lessen the serious impact and so far have discussed concrete ways to do so.

There is a tentative plan to have a job fair for those who might lose their jobs at the university, in order to take care of those employees and make sure they can stay in the city.

McCormick also mentioned that there have been discussions to expand the nuclear reactor in town and create more jobs there.