Chamber of Commerce lays out new local priorities for 2017

The Columbia Chamber of Commerce serves a diverse group of businesses.

“It’s from one person operations that might be operating out of a back bedroom of their home to the largest companies we have here in town,” said Chamber president and CEO Matt McCormick. “It’s all different levels.”

This year, the chamber decided to do something differently when it comes to being the voice of those businesses.

“We unveiled a local legislative agenda,” McCormick said.

The organization already has a state agenda it puts together every year that’s extremely lengthy and robust. The 2017 local agenda is much smaller and includes just seven priorities to start.

Listed below are the priorities and the explanation of each is below the bullet point.

Reform City Sign Code to bring it back into compliance with federal law and encourage changes that make the sign code more business friendly.

“Our sign code [in Columbia] is out of date at this point and signs are imperative to the business community,” said McCormick.

Several new federal laws have changed the standards for signage, especially for electric signs. The Chamber of Commerce is hoping the new Unified Development Code can address some of the outdated regulations for signs.

Advocate for funding that will benefit the airport and new terminal construction. “It’s one of our top priorities on a local level,” said McCormick. “It’s also one of our top priorities on a state level.”

Develop a comprehensive plan for funding Public Safety. “There’s been a couple things that have been tried through the years, but now it’s really about sitting down and figuring this out,” he said. “How do we fund to make sure our police and fire are being taken care of at levels that are expected within our community and within our business community?”

McCormick mentioned that the business community is particularly vulnerable to shoplifting and other crimes and so a robust police force that can respond to those problems is needed.

Help forge a City/County partnership to find solutions for the future of the Boone County Fairgrounds. “We wanted to be able to partner with our county commission and city council,” he said. “How do we figure out what is a good fix and what’s the mechanism to make sure out fairgrounds are up to date, being used and they’re when we need them to be so we can bring our county fair back in?”

Support policies that encourage local private development of workforce and affordable housing. The Chamber of Commerce wants to make sure ordinances and policies that are set in place help developers who want to build different styles of affordable housing.
Promote the need for clear, consistent and equitable regulations for city staff to implement.

“As businesses are looking at moving here or need to build, renovate or expand, we want to make sure the policies and regulations that they have to follow through the city are clear and very concise,” said McCormick. “Everyone’s on the same playing field and the rules are the same.”

A plan to turn the corner of Providence and Broadway into a CVS was rejected three times by the Columbia City Council, and while McCormick wouldn’t confirm if that was the reason for this agenda priority, he did say that the process the developers went through on building plans “shifted from time to time” and was often unclear.

“We work well with our City Council and we respect the work they put in,” he said. “We don’t always agree on everything, but one of the things is that they listen.”

The Chamber of Commerce has found the City Council willing to sit down and have discussions about trends it sees in the business community.

“There’s a number of things we’ve been supportive on and a number of things we don’t agree on,” he said. “Sometimes that is detrimental to business, sometimes it’s not. We work with them on a case-by-case basis.”

Encourage the City Council to abide by the voters will on ballot measures and vote to respect those outcomes. It’s making sure that the money and what the voters are voting on is held up,” said McCormick. “There’s times taht things have shifted, times that things have needed to be shifted and then there’s times things have shifted when they shouldn’t have been.”

The Chamber of Commerce wants to make sure that what Columbia residents are voting on hold true with the city council, especially on things that affect the business community.

This year, a goal for the Chamber of Commerce is to be a more constant voice for local business and to be at the table as frequently as it can be.

“There’s times we’re there at certain issues, but not a constant voice,” McCormick said. “We can always do things better and this is one of the things to help us make sure we’re doing things better.”