Low sales tax growth means tighter 2017 budget for Columbia

Columbia city manager Mike Matthes said Friday morning that historically low sales growth means one to three percent in departmental cuts across the board.

“This is our lowest sales tax growth year in our history except for the great recession,” said Matthes. “This one may be the toughest budget cycle I’ve ever gone through.”

Matthes said the low sales tax growth costs the city about $10 million a year.

Matthes proposed a $440 million dollar budget, which is about $14 million less than last year.

To keep the budget balanced, the city will have to continue its 45-day hiring freeze, purchase no new vehicles, increase building inspection fees, and close the city’s most expensive health plan to new enrollees.

Residents should also expect to see an increase in utilities as well and that would come out to about $3.59 more per month.

Despite an overall drop in all departmental budgets, the police department will see an increase in funding for three new police officers for the next year.

Columbia Mayor Brian Treece has already proposed an amendment to the budget, requesting one more officer to bring the total to four.

Several departments fluctuated in budget this year, especially transportation and support activity, which includes things like IT and public relations.

Transportation saw a more than $10 million drop . Community relations director Steve Sapp said Friday that was due to a lower airport capital improvement project as well as the lower sales tax.

Support activity saw an almost $5 million boost and Sapp said that was due to the city’s plan to reallocate all public information officers under one roof, in order to have a better team dynamic.

He said those are funds already in the budget that have been reallocated.

But Matthes said despite the cuts, there are many ways the city can continue strengthening relationships and achieving goals in the strategic plan.

He said they will continue projects that he said improve community relations, including funding for community events and services.

Additionally, all sworn Columbia police officers will complete race relations training. Matthes said despite recent tensions and accusations that Columbia police are racial profiling, they have been working on ramping up this training for awhile.

“It’s a new area of thinking but we’ve woken up to it,” said Matthes.

The first public hearing on the budget will be at the regularly scheduled council meeting on August 15.