Columbia mayoral candidate interview: Lucio Bitoy
COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)
Municipal elections in Missouri are April 8, and one of the roles up for grabs is the mayoral seat in Columbia.
Incumbent Barbara Buffaloe is running for reelection, while challengers Blair Murphy, Tanya Heath and write-in candidate Lucio Bitoy take a shot at the seat. View an interview ABC 17 News reporter Erika McGuire did with Bitoy in the player above, and read Bitoy’s answers below.
McGuire: Why are you running for mayor? What makes you qualified?
Bitoy: So, I'm running for mayor because I knew that otherwise there would be no substantive agenda for the most vulnerable people in the community. I knew that there would be no Black agenda, there would be no accessibility agenda. There would be no policy agenda that would attack poverty at its level. And I've frankly found it disrespectful to the memory of people like Dr. [Martin Luther] King [Jr.] and that the city likes to tout out every year in its celebration of diversity when it refuses to make any policies Well, first, it likes to whitewash Dr. King and turn him into something that he fundamentally wasn't. They like to truncate both his life and his beliefs. Then they never make up any type of policy agenda that would do anything to change material conditions by combating both privatization capitalism and overall, all-around imperialists and colonial ideologies. It's a lot easier for a city to put together a private brunch and sit around with people that all agree with them, that don't mind rocking any boats or ruffling any feathers, and talk about the legacy of Dr. King, without anybody that's going to talk about what actually got Dr. King killed, which was his analysis on military, imperialism and capitalism and building a more class-based coalition among between Black, brown and low-income white people, same reason they killed Fred Hampton. So to circle back, I knew that those types of policy initiatives would not come to the table otherwise, because the people that are currently in local politics, they lack the background and the spine to fight for those types of things.
McGuire: OK, turning to homelessness. What is your plan to address homelessness in this city?
Bitoy: So, I would like to address homelessness in a few ways. One that's kind of easy to spell out. It would just be through a housing-first initiative where people would be paired with tiny homes that would just be very... basically by mail, bare bones, just something that is a shelter that's connected to local utilities. They'd be responsible for paying 25% of their monthly income, whatever that is, or up to maybe up to maybe $300, let's say, just so they are taking some type of ownership over their housing. So that would give homeless individuals an opportunity to get housing first and then get their lives together, instead of expecting them to get their lives together and then get housing. But anyway, aside from that, some more-preventative things would be investing in the programs and departments that we already have that are designed to combat houselessness or homelessness, but they're underfunded, understaffed and under utilized. Like we have a land trust that would be able to build rental units with permanent rent control, but we can't. Doesn't seem to be much of a push from our local officials to actually utilize that. The land trust very rarely gets a windfall of funds. If ever, so I would be in favor of amending the ongoing the budget going forward to put anywhere from $10-$20 million into the departments that used to make up community development, as well as neighborhood housing and neighborhood services, with a significant portion of that going into the land trust, because they can. They're the only entity that we really have right now. We're the only body in town that we have that can just outright build new developments that can have permanent rent control because they would be exempt from the state preemption law. So, the fact that we're not utilizing that, but we have a housing crisis, to me, that's just that's basic mismanagement.
McGuire: I'm going to move on. I can move on to what can the city do to help clean up homeless camps?
Bitoy: Keep people housed to begin with. That might be, I know that might be a short answer, but yeah, keeping people out to begin with. I know there were some calls for border parties and border towns and shower startups. Or I believe that we need to be making sure that people are housed, that's the first step. If we get them housed, we don't have to worry about cleaning up encampments if people aren't having to live in encampments.
McGuire: OK. How can the city increase affordable housing? I know you kind of already touched base on it.
Bitoy: So the city can increase affordable housing in a few ways. We could establish a small scale land bank and use that to purchase available lots that would normally take a lot longer through going back and forth with the development community. And we could also allocate additional funding for Housing and Neighborhood Services and the department that used to be a part of community development. Because some of those things included things like first time home buyer assistance, rental assistance and things like that. And also by putting more monies into the programs that we have around town through local services, like I know CMCA does some rental assistance, but those funds are always going to be scant at best. So, if we do have local buckets, so to speak, where more funds can be placed to help with housing, keeping people that are housed already in their homes, why are we not putting more money into that, instead of just funneling all the money to policing, as we do, every budget
intentionally.
McGuire: OK, now we're going to turn to crime. Now, what is your plan to reduce crime in the city?
Bitoy: So the million-dollar question that everybody is up in arms about would be crime. And for me, I start with the first offense. And to me, the issue of crime in Columbia that goes unaddressed is the history of political crime and political violence done to Columbia's residents by its local government when the Black infant mortality rate is three times that of white infants. And there's no consistent or concrete plan from the local legislative body on how to reduce that disparity. That is an act of political violence when Black childhood poverty is the highest it's been since Boone County indicators started, breaking that data up by ethnicity, and no one that's in the race or no one in the local body has anything to address that. That is a political act of political violence that is, that should be, and I view that as a crime. Black households make 62% of what white households make. Why is that not considered a crime? I think that we should be addressing these acts of what I would deem to be political crimes and political violence don't do people when we are talking about, what are we going to do to make Columbia safe for everyone? Because CPD, they just got some they recently turned out some of their own numbers, because a lot of times we were having to go based on what the Missouri State Highway Patrol had. CPD not only put out their own numbers, it further proves that crime is not running unchecked. And some people would have you believe, like Blair Murphy, the CPOA president, and some of these local hate groups online, they would have you believe that just through the course of this interview, based on the way they talk about facility, we should have been assaulted by them. Like I just based on how lawless they talk about Columbia being just the course of this interview, we should have either had to been accosted by a homeless person, or had to dodge or had to duck from gunfire. The way that these people are talking about Columbia. But neither the State Highway Patrol numbers bore that out, nor do CPD zone numbers bear that out. So I think that is a near.... we need to just go ahead and bury, because it is, it is bogging down any conversation about actual policies that will change people's material conditions on the ground and with regard to policing. Specifically, I believe in community control over policing, not community policing or civilian oversight, because those mechanisms have been defamed locally and at the state level. And that's not to denounce the work done by people in those organizations or groups. It's just calling what it was. They never had enforcement mechanisms. Now, they can't even make recommendations, so I advocate for community control over policing which be which, if not preempted by the state, would be a system in which the people that live in the various policing districts... got a lot processing everyone they would vote for whether or not they want to keep CPD in their policing district or replace them with something else to two beaters.
McGuire: What is your plan to reduce gun what can city government do about gun violence?
Bitoy: I don't believe that there's much that can be done about gun violence without addressing 1), proliferation of guns, and 2) gun culture. And if we're not trying to do either of those, then we're really kind of just gun flapping with regard to addressing gun culture. I mean, it's exactly that. It's a cultural issue, if we're not going to have a candid conversation about the fact that there are more guns than people in this country. And that it should be appalling to everyone, and that if we can't collectively come to some solutions for how about, we just melt a lot of these down, what can we make out of that? Or like, there has to be something other than some there has to be some other pathway to make people feel safe, other than just proliferating weapons of tools of death. Frankly, abort guns in general, but I know that some people love them, so I'm not trying to say trample on anybody's Second Amendment rights or any nonsense like that. What I am saying is that we need to start having candid conversations about the dangers of gun culture, the proliferation of guns, how guns are getting into the city? Because if we're waiting until guns are already here and then saying, 'OK well, people are using them' that you kind of wait. It's grounded too late. You need to catch them before they get into the city. So, and last thing, I guess, on gun violence specifically, we need to address male violence in society in general, because if we look at the data with regard to violent crime or guns and stuff like that, it's usually like 90% or a male and OK, is this a male issue that we need to be dealing with? Like, is this like a hyper masculinity, machismo be us, type of thing that we need to be weeding out culturally. So, I mean, if we're not addressing patriarchy, we're not addressing gun violence.
McGuire: Two more, one is kind of combined work in the city trim expenses if necessary? You know, rising costs are hitting a lot of people hard. How can city governments help residents with that problem?
Bitoy: I would say, if cuts will be made, start at the top. We have no shortage of individuals working for the city that have six-figure salaries. So, if we're going to be looking to make cuts, I would say, start there. And with regard to any local taxes, I would only be in favor of taxes that were, frankly weighted towards the wealthy. So if local taxes would be changed, if they can't be changed in a way where it would, in fact, tax the rich locally, then I would not be in it really.
McGuire: OK. Last question, what is your top priority, if elected?
Bitoy: Political education and organization with the people. I don't believe that an elected official should be the lone voice or the decider in chief or anything like that. And I don't really see it as this be like, I'm not running for me or making this about me. It's about the work. So my priority would be doing the work of organizing with the people of Columbia to let them know. OK, these are the types of policies that I've come up with, or that you have come up with. We compiled them, turned this into an effective list of demands for the city and bring it a council, and consistently with four votes. That would be the main thing, I would say, would be being able to consistently with four votes to get stuff done, because we currently have leadership that kind of sees their job as mostly just being in a social club and, 'oh, this is a part-time volunteer gig.' Well, you treating this like a part-time volunteer gig has real-life repercussions for people, somebody on the lookout, but yeah, the I guess so primary first thing would be, or the primary thing would be just working with the people to policy craft and policy build to make sure that their agenda is actually carried out, and staying on the member staying on the heels of members of council and the city manager if they are failing to deliver on their promises to the
people.
