Mayor offers new plan for more police

As desire for better, quicker police service increases, Columbia Mayor Brian Treece offered a new plan to hire more officers.

The mayor spoke about his idea Tuesday night at the Columbia City Council meeting, during a discussion of the city’s FY 2017 Capital Improvement Projects. Treece asked to bring the list back, after shuffling money from various projects and sources to help fund public safety.

The plan starts by taking $500,000 dedicated to the failed Fairview and Chapel Hill Roads roundabout project, and moving it to a road repair and maintenance fund. The city council turned the roundabout project down on June 20, after opposition from many people in the neighborhoods near it. That would replace the $400,000 currently budgeted for road repair and maintenance from Columbia Water and Light’s payments in lieu of tax, or PILOT funds. Then, that money would go into the public safety budget, with the intention of more police officers. The money, by city estimates over the last several years, would be good for hiring four new officers.

“People aren’t going to want to locate their business here, or send their son or daughter to college here if they don’t feel safe, and I want to make sure that we’re providing the public safety officers that we need,” Treece told ABC 17 News.

Columbia Water and Light pays yearly into the budget’s General Fund an amount “equivalent to the sum which would be paid in taxes if the utility was privately owned,” according to the FY 2016 budget. PILOT is the second-highest funding source for the General Fund, behind sales tax – which almost completely accounts for the money both the police and fire departments receive every year. Water and Light paid $15.9 million for FY 2016.

Treece’s plan involves PILOT funds stemming from the Columbia Energy Center, three natural gas power generators on Peabody Road. The city bought the land from Ameren through a voter-approved 2011 electric bond issue. Payments to the school district, library and Boone County Family Resource Center from the CEC ended last year, and the utility department now dedicates the money to Street and Sidewalk infrastructure projects. In total, PILOT will pay for $841,869 in street and sidewalk repairs, according to the budget.

Treece said he wants the plan to align with what Columbia citizens voiced in its 2015 citizen satisfaction survey. Public safety ranked as the highest, with road infrastructure second. Treece said the move would both increase money for road repair by 25 percent, and significantly increase public safety funds.

The city promised a roundabout at Fairview and Chapel Hill as part of the CIP Sales Tax Extension in August 2015 – a ten-year renewal of the quarter-cent tax. The council, which Treece was not a member of at the time, had to first approve the list of projects to offer to voters before it went to the ballot. Mayor Treece said he did not think it was a disingenuous move to defund the project, due to its unpopularity.

“I don’t know that anyone has come to city council asking for a roundabout there,” Treece said. These traffic problems are about fifteen minutes a day, twice a day, about nine months a year. And in the whole scheme of things, it’s not a big problem that we need to spend $600,000 to fix.”

City spokesman Steve Sapp told ABC 17 News that the City Manager’s Office and Finance Department were working Wednesday to analyze the plan.