Capital Improvement Sales Tax Extension on ballot in time with recent renovation project
COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)
The Columbia City Council has voted to call a special election during Missouri's primary elections on Tuesday on whether or not to extend the Capital Improvement Sales Tax.
Voted on every 10 years, the tax is a one-fourth of one percent sales tax that has been funding high-cost infrastructure projects in Columbia for decades.
A recently completed project is renovations to Ridgemont bridge, which was completed on May 7. The renovations allowed heavier vehicles to pass over.
John Ogan, spokesperson for Columbia Public Works, said the bridge was first built around the 1960s.
As bridges age, inspectors review their conditions and assign weight limits for the bridge. Due to natural deterioration, older bridges tend to have lower weight limits. When the bridge was closed for replacement in November 2023, its weight limit was 3 tons.
With important vehicles like school buses, fire trucks and fully-loaded snow plows weighing over 10 tons, the bridge's weight limit forced heavier vehicles to reroute to Forum Boulevard, limiting routes to the area's more than 300 homes.
The new bridge has a weight limit of 38 tons, accommodating many different vehicles, and also features a sidewalk on the south side.
Emergency services can now go directly across the bridge instead of having to navigate around it. According to Ogan, this helped shorten Columbia fire Department's estimated response times from four minutes to one and a half minutes.
"We are always super appreciative of having quality infrastructure so that we can continue our mission, which is to get to an incident as quickly and effectively as possible so that we can save lives," Columbia Fire Department's Katherine Rodriguez said. "Reducing that kind of runtime or call time getting to an incident quickly as possible, there's a lot of things that go into that."
The project cost $775,600 and was funded by both the Missouri Department of Transporation and money from the city's Capital Improvement Sales Tax.
According to the City of Columbia, if renewed the Capital Improvement Sales Tax will earn around $83 million during the next 10-year period for local infrastructure projects.
"We use those funds to fund large projects such as bridges," Ogan said. "Also roundabouts or roads that need to be widened."
Information on the Tax extension and how to vote on it is on the City of Columbia's website.
