Well, good evening.

I'm gonna go ahead and call uh the May 18th, 2026 uh Columbia City Council meeting to order by all those who are able to please rise and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

Sheila, will you please call roll?

Miss Carroll.

Here.

Miss Elwood?

Here.

Ms.

Sample?

Here.

Mr.

Foster.

Ms.

Hartman.

Here.

Ms.

Peters.

Here.

Miss Buffalo.

Here.

All right, moving on.

So for those of you, this is your first city council meeting, just a quick overview of our agenda.

Items that are listed under the consent agenda unless an adjustment is made.

There's not usually a presentation on those, and there's not opportunity for public comment.

Items that are listed under introduction of first read that have an asterisk will be on the consent agenda at the next meeting unless again an adjustment is made.

Items that are under intro that do not have an asterisk means that they will either be a public hearing or under old business at that meeting, which means they have a presentation and opportunity for public comment.

Our rules for public comment and public speaking.

There's multiple opportunities to speak at city council meetings.

You can talk under public hearing, old business, and new business.

We ask for the remarks to be uh to the legislation that we are discussing.

At the end of the council meeting, you have three minutes.

You can talk about whatever you want within real respectful limits.

Um I do remind people to keep it to those items when we are doing the legislation.

Please provide your name and your ward so that we can um make sure it's in the minutes correctly.

Individuals are allotted three minutes.

Representatives of organizations can request five minutes if they're affected by the legislation.

I ask people to respect the time limits.

Uh, we do that so as many people can speak that want to speak, and that we're not here until Tuesday.

Um we also ask that people avoid demonstrations that might intimidate your neighbors from speaking.

We want everyone's voice to have an opportunity to be heard.

We can address issues.

Please do not attack individuals, and that means city staff as well.

Disruptions would be addressed with a warning, and if necessary, removal, and we'd have a brief recess.

Uh so moving on to our regular agenda.

Uh we have no minutes to approve today.

We'll probably have two meeting minutes at the next meeting.

Um, and for adjustment of the agenda, um, staff has asked for Bill 13626, which is under intro and first read, uh, to be removed from the agenda because the Federal Highway Administration is not ready yet to move forward with that.

Uh and then I believe uh Councilmember Carroll plans to remove Bill 12326 from the consent agenda, so that will go at the end of the old business agenda.

Are there any other changes to the agenda?

Seeing none, I'll make a motion uh to approve the agenda with Bill 12326 being moved to old business and Bill 1362 being completely removed from the agenda.

Do I have a second?

Second.

Second from Betsy.

All those in favor as the agenda as amended say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

All right.

Uh so now I would like to do our first special item.

So I'll ask for police chief Jill Schlute to please come forward to the podium uh for our life-saving ribbon uh in meritus service award.

And I can keep talking while you're walking up if you want.

No.

Thank you.

I feel weird with my back to everybody, so I'm gonna try to do sideways, I guess, which is equally awkward.

So we're starting to try to do these a little bit more publicly, and I think that's because in the past we haven't spent as much time drawing needed attention to the good work that goes on in the police department pretty much constantly, I think, uh, in small ways and big ways.

This happens to be uh a pretty big way, and so I'm gonna read some things.

I'm actually gonna have the officers come up.

I want you guys to come up here and stand while I'm reading this, please.

Yes, you too, Malik.

I think a lot of the people in this room will remember this incident.

Uh it was just earlier this year in January 4th of 2026.

And to be perfectly blunt, it's probably one of the more heinous crimes I've seen committed in the city of Columbia in my 20 years here.

So the response that these officers had was very, very uh appreciated and and frankly amazing in many respects.

On January 4th, 2026, at about 9.04 p.m., officers responded to a shots-fired call at the 4800 block of Clark Lane.

Upon arrival, officers displayed outstanding courage by joining officers Harold, Guise, and Brown as they advanced into the apartment complex to locate an active scene.

Officer Brown assisted in the tactical entry of a residence where a female was heard screaming.

Inside, he helped take a suspect into custody who was actively assaulting a victim.

Recognizing the need to secure the environment for medical intervention, Officer Brown took charge of the suspect and removed him from the immediate scene.

By successfully securing the suspect, Officer Brown created a safe perimeter that allowed fellow officers to focus entirely on providing life-saving aid to the victims.

Officer Quinton Brown's swift actions and bravery in an unpredictable, dangerous situation were essential to the safety of the public and his fellow officers.

Therefore, I'm presenting this certificate of commendation of commendable performance to Officer Quentin Brown.

During the same incident, Officer Catherine Guise joined Officer Harrell in the advance to locate the active scene.

Officer Guise observed a shattered window and heard a female screaming from within.

Displaying outstanding courage, she entered the residence and assisted in the apprehension of a male suspect who was actively assaulting a victim.

After the suspect was successfully taken into custody and removed from the scene, Officer Guise immediately transitioned from a tactical response to providing life-saving medical aid.

Inside the apartment, Officer Guise located a victim who had been shot and stabbed.

Alongside Officer Harrel and Brown, she began applying critical first aid and continued these life-saving efforts until EMS arrived to take over.

Officer Guise's bravery in an unpredictable and dangerous situation combined with her rapid transition to medical care was instrumental in securing the scene and saving a young woman's life.

I present this certificate of commendation of commendable performance to Officer Catherine Guise.

When Officer Nathan Harrell arrived, he was immediately confronted by a victim who was shot in the face.

Recognizing the ongoing danger, Officer Harrell advised the deputies that it had responded to assist that they had to keep going and further in further to the scene to locate the activity.

As he approached, Officer Harrell located a second gunshot victim in the front yard and observed a shattered window with a female screaming from inside the residence.

He led the entry into the department into the apartment where he located a male standing over a victim and actively assaulting a female.

Officer Harrell took control of a volatile situation, ordering the male out where he was taken into custody.

Immediately after the suspect was secured, Officer Harrell advised the other officers they had to go inside to check on the remaining victim.

He located a woman who had been shot and stabbed and began applying life-saving first aid until EMS arrived.

Officer Nathan Harrell displayed extraordinary leadership and courage in an unknown dangerous situation, directly leading to the suspect's capture and the saving of a young woman's life.

This certificate of commendation for meritorious service is awarded Officer Nathan Harrell.

A victim suffering from a gunshot wound to the chest had fled through snow and sub-20 degree temperatures before being located in a church parking lot.

Upon arrival, Officer Howard successfully located a victim in a church parking lot who had been shot in the chest and had fled through the snow.

After reaching the incapacitated victim, Officer Howard immediately began the critical task of searching for the gunshot wound.

Despite the freezing environment, he began removing the victim's clothing to gain access to the injury and assess the severity of the trauma.

Officer Nicholas Howard's rapid location of the victim and his immediate initiation of medical assessment were the first vital steps in the chain of survival.

His timely response and effective teamwork in a life-threatening situation directly contributed to saving a citizen's life.

I present this certificate of life-saving commendation to Officer Nicholas Howard.

Also responding to that same call for gunshot wounds, Officer Devin Jens responded to that scene as well.

And upon arriving at the scene, Officer Jens demonstrated outstanding situational awareness by securing a trauma bag from his patrol vehicle before even reaching the victim.

Working in sub-20 degree temperatures and snowy conditions, Officer Jens immediately assisted in removing the victim's clothing to locate the wound and provide clear access for medical intervention.

His proactive decision to bring specialized medical equipment to the victim's side ensured that life-saving chest seals could be applied without delay.

Officer Devin Jen's quick thinking and effective teamwork in a high stress, life-threatening situation were vital to the survival of a critically injured citizen.

I present this certificate of commendation for life saving to Officer Devin Jens.

And last but certainly not certainly not least from our street crimes unit, Detective Malik Damron.

So Detective Dameron also responded to that same shots fired call.

And he quickly identified the severity of the chest wound to one of the victims and applied a chest seal.

Recognizing the potential for an exit wound, he directed the victim to be rolled over and applied a second chest seal to the victim's back.

Understanding the life-threatening combination of the injury and the freezing weather, Detective Damron also coordinated the victim's removal from the snow and ensured they were wrapped in a blanket to prevent hypothermia until EMS arrived.

Detective Dameron's decisive leadership and expert medical awareness during this volatile situation were instrumental in stabilizing the victim.

His timely actions alongside with the responding officers directly resulted in saving the life of a citizen who would have otherwise succumbed to their injuries.

One other quick note I want to make is that apart from Detective Dameron, who has been with us for some time now.

That is an amazing testament to their dedication, their training, the work that they do with their supervisors and their teams every day to prepare for situations just like this.

So thank you all for your support and thank you so much to all of you for all you do every day.

Thank you for your service and thank you, Chief, for making an opportunity for us to acknowledge them at a public meeting.

Appreciate that.

Moving on, we have one other special item this evening, and that's recognition of our senior youth advisory council members.

So I'll invite the staff council lease on to uh that to say a few words, and then I'll invite those who are able to join me with the certificates down there.

So Jackie.

So I have had the extreme honor of working as a city council staff liaison for the Youth Advisory Council this last year.

Um for those of you, excuse me who don't know, these uh this council is made up of high school students, and it's open to all high schools, all homeschools um within Columbia.

So these students give their time um at least once a month to come to a meeting.

This year, they were very active in planning a youth summit.

Um they did it last year too, but this year they ramped it up real big.

And they success, they actually met outside of our usually scheduled meetings to get it done.

It was a hugely successful event.

We're gonna be hearing your annual report a little bit later, so I would encourage you all to stick around and and listen because it's pretty impressive.

So I'm very happy, I'm very happy um to work with this group.

They're very impressive.

I'm sorry to be losing our seniors, um, but I'm sure they will go on to do wonderful things, and I can't wait to see what they accomplish.

Yes, thank you for that and for their service.

Um, so we've got, I think we've got seven um five, six that are graduating, but maybe only two are able to be here this evening.

So if I call your name, if you wouldn't mind coming up to get your certificate, pose for a photo with Jason and whoever else you want in it, uh, and then come.

So Grace Harris.

Sorry, you're at the back.

Come on up, and then I'll just read our other graduating and seniors.

Um, I don't think they're here, but if you are, come please come up.

We've got Casey King.

If we can laugh, yes, yes, they're still here.

They'll hear it online.

Mira Tosh.

Got John Yu and Alex Hiles from Lynn.

Yeah.

So thank you again for your service.

Appreciate it.

And we have a collegiate advisory council if you're sticking around.

Oh, yeah.

And I would be remiss if I didn't also acknowledge our outgoing uh city manager fellow who serves as the staff leads on Lacey Salazar.

So Lacey, thank you for your service and good luck on your next adventure.

So besides the Youth Advisory Council, the City of Columbia have numerous boards and commissions, the advice city council on a varied uh topics of importance in our community.

So we have some appointments to make this evening.

And I'll remind those uh who are interested in serving the community.

Um we make appointments every month, and so coming this Wednesday, we'll have the next round of vacancies will be open for the June appointments.

So up first for um vacancies that we have and applicants that we have is the Columbia Housing Authority.

So this is um the mayor's appointment.

We have one applicant, Rigel Oliveri.

Uh, and so I'm I will recommend for Rigel to continue to serve as that important voice in the on that one.

Uh up next, then is the convention and visitors advisory board.

We'll need roll card because we have three applicants for one vacancy.

So Sheila, we please call roll.

Miss Carroll.

Don Waterman, Miss Elwood, Don Waterman, Miss Sample.

Don Waterman, Miss Hartman, Carrie Bloss, Miss Peters, Don Waterman.

And Miss Buffalo.

Dun Waterman.

Don has been appointed.

All right.

And then the next one we have is the Finance Advisory and Audit Committee.

Uh we have we'll need to do roll applicants.

Um, roll call again because we have three applicants for one vacancy.

So, Sheila.

Miss Carroll.

Miss Elwood.

Garlandra King.

Miss Sample.

Amanda Schultz.

Miss Hartman.

Garland King.

Miss Peters.

Amanda Schultz.

And Miss Buffalo.

Garlandra King.

Garlandra has been appointed.

And then up next for Parks and Recreation Commission.

We have a couple of vacancy, one that is specific to the ward location, and one that is an at-large.

So I ask Sheila to please call the at-large applicants first.

Miss Carroll.

Ellen Young.

Miss Elwood.

Ellen Young.

Miss Sample.

Ellen Young.

Miss Hartman.

Ellen Young.

Miss Peters.

Ellen Young.

Miss Buffalo.

Ellen Young.

Ellen's been appointed.

And now for the fourth ward representative.

Miss Carroll.

Stephen Lewandowski.

Miss Elwood.

Richard Burns.

Ms.

Sample.

Stephen Lewandowski.

Miss Hartman.

Stephen Lindowski.

Sorry.

Miss Peters.

Richard Burns.

And Miss Buffalo.

Stephen Leo Lewendowski.

I think it's Stephen has been appointed.

And then up next, we'll need roll call.

We have seven applicants for two vacancies on the Planning Zoning Commission.

And as just a point make a quick note, as we told all the applicants that we talked to, we've heard learned of a couple other uh resignations due to jobs to that one.

So unless we hear differently, uh we'll also consider those who applies who are not appointed this evening for those June applications as well.

So we please call roll on um the first vacancy for planning and zoning commission.

Miss Carroll, Anthony Stanton, Miss Elwood, Anthony Stanton, Miss Sample, Anthony Stanton, Miss Hartman, Anthony Stanton, Miss Peters.

Anthony Stanton.

Miss Buffalo.

Anthony Stanton.

Anthony has been reappointed.

And for the second vacancy.

Miss Carroll.

Grace Conrad.

Miss Elwood.

Grace Conrad.

Miss Sample.

Andrew Graybaugh.

Miss Hartman.

Grace Conrad.

Miss Peters.

Andrew Graybaugh.

Miss Buffalo.

Andrew Graybaugh.

That's a three-three vote.

So we'll start again.

Miss Elwood.

Andrew Graybau.

Miss Sample.

Andrew Gabaugh.

Ms.

Hartman.

Grace Conrad.

Miss Peters.

Andrew Graybaugh.

Miss Buffalo.

Andrew Grayba.

Miss Carroll.

Grace Conrad.

Andrew was has been appointed with four votes.

Thank you.

And then moving on to the Youth Advisory Council for our outgoing seniors.

If if you all are agreeable, all seven applicants can be avoided appointed by voice vote.

The term end dates will still need to be agreed upon because we have.

What am I looking at, Sheila on this one?

We have one that one term that ends in 2027 and the rest in 2029.

So I would suggest one of the seniors be appointed to that 2027.

Okay.

Vacancy and the rest to the 2029.

Okay, so let's call for that one first.

Well, all seven can be appointed.

Oh, I mean, which one?

Sorry, let me see.

So we have can you point out the seniors?

Because now I'm looking at it.

Um Gavin Bach, if I'm pronouncing that correctly.

Neva Bandari and Emily Crumless and uh Jack McRae appear to be the seniors.

Okay.

Um I know Emily's been on it for a while.

If you want, let's just make her the 2020 system.

Let's make her at the twenty because she's already going to be graduating and has served.

Okay.

And then the other ones, we'll just have to re-advertise when if they leave early next year for the term.

We'll just have to re-write.

The rest will be 2029.

Okay.

Perfect.

Thank you.

Everybody good with that.

Yeah.

Yes.

All right.

Thank you.

Awesome.

Any other things on that one?

I don't see any.

All right.

So as a reminder, um, vacancies will be appointed.

Any that had vacancies that didn't have applicants, uh, will be re-advertised.

So moving on in our agenda.

Um, scheduled public comment.

Members of the public can reach out to the city manager's office by 5 p.m.

the Monday prior to the city council meeting to schedule a five minutes at the beginning of the council meeting.

Topics on schedule public comment cannot be on items that are on old business, new business, or public hearings.

Uh, they can do scheduled um public comment on the report section, as you will see this evening.

Um, it's been of typical practice of the city council to ask for additional follow-up if it's warranted at the end of the council meeting.

And tonight we have three scheduled public comments.

So I'd first like to please ask uh Colin Skinner to please come forward to speak.

All right, good evening.

I'm Colin Skinner.

I've lived in Colombia my whole life.

Um I'm here because for much of that time I was struggling to find something in town that I truly loved being a part of.

Uh something with a like-minded community.

Something that made me happy I was living in Columbia rather than anywhere else.

I found that about a year ago at Vidwest Studios.

Uh before Vidwest, I was always telling my friends about creative ideas, uh, but it stopped there.

Always just concepts with no pipeline to reality.

No way to actualize this creative part of me.

And then a friend told me about Midwest, so I showed up and joined a writer's workshop.

Uh it was one of the best things to ever happen to me.

Uh I've been part of organizations before, uh, but none that fit my personality and dreams so precisely.

I had that feeling of belonging where I could say, this is where I'm meant to be.

Um I would ask if any of you have ever had uh that sort of feeling.

After the writer's workshop, I started a writer's group.

Uh I also set up an LLC for future productions.

My first uh sketch comedy production is now in final edits, filmed in Columbia, Missouri and premiering in Columbia, Missouri.

And my next short film is in pre-production.

Uh the goal, and this seems to be happening faster as the community grows, is to make consistent local film production a reality in Colombia.

And as this community grows, it doesn't just create art, it creates collaboration, local business, networking, technical skills, and reasons for creative people to stay in Colombia instead of leaving uh for bigger cities.

We lose all this.

If Vidwest doesn't get city funding.

We simply do not have the finances to train workers or acquire the equipment necessary for strong production if city support disappears.

Um Vidwest is a multifaceted community service, and it's run independently.

In many ways, it functions like a public library.

Uh only its focus is on creative skills and media, and we check out devices rather than books.

It's exactly the kind of thing many cities would be ecstatic to have, but they simply don't have the passionate citizens and staff that we do here in Columbia.

So please work together to support this endeavor created by and for the people of Columbia.

Uh you saw how many of us came to the last city council meeting, and that wasn't even half of the community.

There are many more working, collaborating, and growing together at this place uh behind the scenes.

Thanks for your time.

I truly appreciate the work and care you all bring to the people you serve in Columbia, Missouri.

Thanks.

Thanks, Colin.

Um I now like to ask Jim Windsor to come forward to speak.

Yep.

Thank you.

Jim Winds, 200 manor drive.

I attended the cost of service discussion, and I was glad to hear the uh consultants say it's good to keep the base charges down because it's harder for uh customers to control their bill if they continually go up and it helps with affordability.

Uh the table you're looking at, the top one uh is electric and water.

You have a base charge, but then you have to add on the 7.5268 pilot, and after that you have to set uh add on sales tax to get the actual base amount.

Uh in the other table, it shows all of the base amounts uh on the one on the low end uh is uh a normal 58 to 3 quarter inch water main or water meter and a uh storm water charge uh for a small house under 750 square feet and the smallest roll card.

That is the minimum that anyone can pay before they actually start using anything.

No water, no electricity, no discharge of sewer.

The upper number is for uh one-inch water meter, which increases the water and the sewer charge, and for a house over 2,000 square feet and for a large uh roll cart.

So basically, people uh the most people are have the uh medium medium size roll cart, so in reality, most pay people are paying around $75 before they use anything.

Uh it's good to hear that sewer base is going to go down a little, but if the increases occur in a couple years, it'll be back up to what it was while everything else is going up also.

Um here are the uh consultant recommended rate increases that you've heard about.

Uh you also heard that a lot they're recommending a 6% electric rate increase, but that does not uh address the power cost adjustment issue, which the water and light board wants you to uh is encouraging, going from 15% of the smallest rate up to 25% and would be extremely detrimental.

Uh kind of opposite of what the utility has been trying to do in encouraging efficiency and certainly for the very large industrial customers.

Um there is a difference between real uh transparency that builds trust uh and uh enables better decision making, and those that are is just window dressing and really creates more uh mistrust and confusion.

And unfortunately, I think we have seen a lot of that, and that you hear from other people the same thing.

Uh a couple of years ago I came and talked about the uh fraudulent annexation of the water plant.

That uh at the time they said it was no fiscal impact.

In reality, the water utility had to pay another 400,000 a year in property tax equivalent.

Uh when the mayor asked to talk about it at budget, the only presentation was you were supposed to envision the elimination of pilot uh the 18 million dollars or 50 percent of it.

In reality, I was only talking about 300,000.

So the question was avoided.

It was not addressed.

Uh and I still hope you address that because it's still a fraudulent annexation, and we are about to get hit with a $800 to $900,000 additional cost from the capital improvements being done at the uh water plant for no reason.

Um the issue that I brought up most recently, and we heard at the uh finance advisory committee last Monday, sewer in Solid Waste started paying gross receipts tax.

That was as far as I know, never went to council.

Uh nobody, you guys did not authorize that.

It was just done.

To the effect that both utilities are paying about $2 million each more in fixed cost.

And that goes directly to those base cost issues.

Um I did this.

I asked the question, I've got no response.

Um but so I looked at back at FY20, and it appears if you do 7% of the total revenue.

There really isn't enough left over to address it, but uh it it certainly is being done now.

So I hope you get answers to the questions I've asked, and you need to address the issue of transparency.

Thank you.

And finally, I'd like to ask Grace Harris to please come forward to speaking.

Hello, my name is Grace Harris, and I am the chair of the City of Columbia's Youth Advisory Council.

I'm a senior at Hickman High School, and this is our annual report.

Perfect.

So the Youth Advisory Council, our mission of the Youth Advisory Council is to empower the youth of our community to get involved and develop the skills necessary to lead a better future.

Um some general facts.

We have 15 council members this year.

Um across this year, we have served over a hundred community members.

We have held two events a honeysuckle removal and youth summit.

We have had 10 meetings this year, and only one meeting canceled due to lack of quorum, which is a drastic improvement from previous years.

We have created one new initiative and had seven volunteers.

Um our projects and key milestones for this year.

We had a honeysuckle removal.

So every year we pick three areas of focus for our group to really narrow in on.

And so this year they were sustainability, safety and security, and wellness.

So we were like, what can we do to get our community involved in these areas and learn as we grow along them?

So we launched a honeysuckle removal with the help of Mike Slodowski.

We had community members come volunteer with us, and we removed Honeysuckle, and it was a lot of fun.

Um met with Dr.

Klein, the Columbia Public Schools superintendent to discuss how YAC can become involved with the schools and reach more people through that.

Um we also attended a meeting with the coalition of community violence to talk about youth life in Columbia and what YAC has been doing in that safety and security area.

Um one of our biggest accomplishments accomplishments of this year was our Instagram takeover.

So we created five posts on our own, designing them, putting the information in, using resources, and they were posted on the City of Columbia's Instagram.

And so we generated around over 40,000 views, reached 1,000 people, and engaged a lot of people on the City of Columbia Instagram, which was a huge hit and success for us.

We started our first ever social media subcommittee and created our very own YAC logo.

Um to kind of end the year, we had a youth summit at Earth Day.

And so this was like our own area of Earth Day, where we had a table for each of our areas of focus.

We had rock painting, we had trifolds with important information, we had polling for people to tell us what issues they really care about, and it was a huge success.

We had around 100 people engage with us, get to know us, get to know who we are and what we do.

And so that was definitely a highlight of the year for me.

And so you can kind of see here our youth summit summary.

You can see we collected data, those are our table picture of our table in the top right-hand corner.

Um, and so we collected data to see what these people are doing.

And so we did reach a lot of younger kids because it is Earth Day.

So you can see that data there.

Um, and we talked about people about sustainability, what they felt about the planet, what their worries were, and how they can choose to live more sustainably.

For safety and security, we asked what safety meant to people and if they felt safe in Columbia.

And these were kids answering these questions.

For wellness, we talked about people what their biggest barrier to personal wellness was, what how they can de stress and live safely, and if they have an adult since these are youth that they can talk to without judgment and have that safe space.

Our recommendations for the year, outreach and representation.

We want to make sure that every high school has equal and significant representation and has a seat at the table.

So we want to make sure that all of our high schools have someone on there.

We currently do not have any YAC members from Battle High School, and after I leave, oh, maybe one, and after I leave, we only have one from Hickman.

So we really want to make sure that we have everyone representing their high schools at this great group.

Um we propose a youth conference next year or in the future that would be hosted.

It would be a free event partnering with the City of Columbia.

It would be an opportunity for youth to connect with internship opportunities, job opportunities, volunteering, resources in the community, and just be an awesome way for youth our age to network, meet other high schoolers, and learn about all the opportunities that we do have in Columbia.

And we had such a great staff liaison with of Lacey and Jackie was such a great council representative this year that we just want to make sure that we have dedicated people in the future who are really energetic and excited about this group and ready to help us lead.

And then you can see our data from our social media takeover here.

We reached a lot of people, more than other posts on the City of Columbia's Instagram, I might point out.

So we would like to do it again in the future.

And it was really successful.

And then finally, one of our last things we did in the year was re we wrote an official letter of support to the Missouri General Assembly sponsoring two bills that we felt should be passed in the community to really get involved with the safety and security aspect.

Thank you.

Thank you, Grace.

All right, moving on.

Um public hearings.

Sheila, will you please read public hearing 1626 and the coordinating Bill 12026?

Public hearing 1626 is the consideration of the removal of tracks owned by Burrell Incorporated in Eddington Ridge Apartments LP from the boundary of the North 763 Community Improvement District in Council Bill 120 26 is an ordinance authorizing removal of tracks owned by Burrell Incorporated in Eddington Ridge Apartments LP from the boundary of the North 763 Community Improvement District and fixing the time when this ordinance shall become effective.

Second reading.

Do we have a staff report?

Yes.

Becky Thompson, Deputy City Councilor.

So the city received a request from the North 763 Community Improvements Improvement District for consent to remove the property owned by Burrell from the district.

This also includes property titled in the name of Eatington Ridge Apartments LP.

And this started as a request from Burrell to the Community Improvement District Board that was considered.

State law requires that City Council hold a public hearing, and then following the public hearing, the council can determine whether it's in the best interest of the community improvement district to remove the requested property, and then also make a finding that the district can meet its obligations without the revenue from the property that's going to be removed.

Because a property that is going to be removed and will not have any effect on revenues or repayment obligations of the district, staff recommends approval of the request.

Happy to answer any questions.

Any questions of counsel to staff?

Yeah, Betsy.

I don't know if you can answer this or not, Becky, but um what is the point of the North 763 Community Improvement District?

And do we have any idea what they're actually doing?

We do.

So they submit, and there may be somebody from the improvement district here tonight that can also answer questions, but they submit annual reports regarding their revenue and also their expenditures.

And then when the um when the district was originally improved, they had a list of um of intended improvements for the district.

If I can flip to it here.

And these three tracks don't um financially contribute to this improvement district.

They don't.

There's those no no sales on any of these tracks, and so that's how that's how the district's funded currently is by a half cent sales tax.

Okay, thanks.

Any other questions for staff on this?

I'll go ahead and open up the public hearing.

Would anyone from the public wish to speak on um Bill 12026?

Being none, I'll close the public hearing.

The only I can tell you, Betsy, some of the um things that were originally planned were streets, storm sewer, um sanitary sewer, landscaping, um electric phone cable conduits, additional sign is engineering, so projects like that.

Okay, thank you.

Yeah.

All right, seeing that there's no if there's no other questions, I'll ask Sheila to please call roll on bill 12026.

Council Bill 12026, Ms.

Carroll.

Yes.

Ms.

Sample?

Yes.

Ms.

Hartman.

Yes.

Ms.

Peters.

Yes.

Ms.

Buffalo.

Yes.

All right, moving on to public hearing 1726.

Um, Sheila, will you please re read?

Public hearing 1726 is the proposed construction of HVAC and interior lighting improvements at the Armory Sports and Recreation Center, providing for the design and construction of the proposed project using a guaranteed energy cost savings contract.

Do we have a staff report?

Yes, we do.

Eric Hempel managed the Office of Sustainability.

Gabe Huffington here.

Director of Parts and Recreation.

This public hearing is for the proposed improvements, as you said, to lighting and heating and air conditioning systems at the Armory Sports and Rec Center.

Also have representatives from MRESCO, the energy services company we have been working with also here tonight.

They can talk in more detail and answer questions about the project and the performance contracting approach to this project delivery.

So the Armory was built in 1939.

It's a Columbia Landmark community resource, and because it's utilized by multiple city departments, primarily parks and rec, the maintenance of the facility is the responsibility of public works.

The HVAC systems at the Armory have been in service since 2000 when the building was last remodeled.

And so now in 2026, the equipment is well past its rated lifespan of 15 years.

This older equipment can negatively affect comfort and efficiency.

It's costly to repair and parts are becoming increasingly expensive and difficult to find.

So a little bit about the approach to getting these improvements made.

The approach is called Energy Savings Performance Contracting or ESPC.

It's completed by Energy Services Companies or ESCOs, and Amoresco was selected in March of 2025 after competitive procurement to help us with this project.

So ESPC is a three-phase process.

First, we asked MRESCO to screen facilities for potential energy operational and maintenance improvements.

And from that high-level screening, the best opportunities were selected and a detailed investment grade audit was developed.

So this IGA is attached to the council agenda and contains specific improvement measures, savings, and costs.

So it is a very robust analysis of the energy use, uh, maintenance costs and solutions to reduce those costs.

So we've like I said, we've currently completed the IGA phase, and with your approval tonight, we'll move on to the execution phase.

So in this second phase, the construction for this project will be managed by Amheresco as the general design build contractor.

After construction phase, we would enter the performance guarantee phase, where Amoresco is contractually obligated to reimburse the city should any energy savings shortfalls occur.

There is a lot of information on this slide.

The bottom line summarizes the project costs and savings.

So the total project cost uh including financing is uh just over $2 million.

The there uh will be $9,035 in annual energy savings, and those are guaranteed energy savings.

156,086 in annual operation and maintenance savings.

And so all three projects, sorry, all four, so that's three heating and cooling projects and the one LED project combined are expected to have a just over a 12-year simple payback.

Also included as a part of this cost benefit is uh estimated just over $35,000 in City of Columbia utility rebates.

With the new energy use, so lowered energy use, um, the armory facility, which again uh was built in 1939, uh, will be at or below energy star certification level energy use.

So that's a uh very impressive accomplishment.

Currently uh we're 35 percent higher than the Energy STAR certification level.

So a significant amount of savings in energy.

There are uh warranties associated with the project, one year labor for all the work, three years parts warranty for the HVAC, excluding the compressors, and then a five-year compressor warranty, uh and that's also a five-year warranty on lighting for parts.

So the financing of the project, the project cost will be funded using the city's internal loan fund.

The loan will be paid back over a period of 10 years at about 4.14 percent interest.

Um that comes out to average annual payments of just over 25,000 per year.

Those payments will be made out of the public improvement sales tax fund.

So, as far as communication about the project so far, um there was an interested parties meeting held at the Armory on April 21st.

We delivered uh notification lever letters and flyers with project details uh to neighboring property occupants.

Uh flyer about the project was posted in the armory lobby.

That flyer with information about the project and the interested parties meeting was also emailed to known Armory users.

Um members of the public attended the public meeting.

However, we do have a be heard page that continues to attract attention.

Um by April 14th had received about 77 total visits.

Whenever we make an announcement, um, when the the uh council agenda came out, we saw an increase in traffic at that page.

Um this page will remain active throughout the project uh to be able to communicate the project schedule and any uh programming updates or changes for uh programs at the at the armory.

Um let's see, the care offices will be temporarily re relocated to a different parks and recreation facility.

The community recreation offices will be temporarily relocated, um, ideally within the armory.

Uh we're still evaluating the programming impacts as the project scheduling details are finalized.

Um the facility will be unavailable for rentals during the construction period, which is uh will construction will start in October and last, depending on some some details yet to work to be worked out through December or potentially into January.

Um any program information, uh project information, closures, et cetera, will be published in the uh fall, winter leisure times.

We'll also be using on-site signs on the site of the armory itself, um, using the social media channels for the city, um, be heard page, like I mentioned, and then also press releases.

Um staff is requesting that the council authorize a city manager to proceed with the additional work as described in the investment grade audit.

Uh be happy to try to answer any questions you might have.

Any questions from council of staff on the proposed improvements at the armory?

See none, I'll go ahead and open up the public hearing.

Does anybody from the public wish to speak about the proposed efficiency improvements at the city's armory?

None, I will close the public comment or public hearing.

Uh any last oh.

I think Amreska wanted to make some comment about that.

I will reopen up the public or just public comment.

That's fine.

You have to be quick around here.

Hi, everyone.

I'm still only giving you three to five minutes, though.

Pardon me.

Yeah.

Oh, I'm just saying uh it will be five minutes comparison.

Sorry.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Thank you.

I'm not going to need the five minutes.

Thank you.

Hello, everyone.

My name is My name is Dana Dunn, and I'm with Amoresco.

And uh we're just grateful to be here with you tonight.

I would like to introduce two of my colleagues that I brought with me in case we have questions here.

Uh John O'Haren and Sean Barley.

And what we're going to do is provide just a brief overview of this project.

And there's not a whole lot more that I'm going to be able to say that Eric didn't summarize.

So that was very good.

Thank you, Eric.

But what we're going to do is is have a brief overview of this.

Oh my God, where's my question?

Um probably need to exit out of this.

Just hit escape.

There, and then shrink that.

And then it's probably on the desktop.

There we go.

Thank you.

So what Eric said about being procured competitively back in 2023, the city issued an RFP for an energy services company.

And that's what Amoresco is we're called an energy services company.

Uh they call it an ESCO.

And in March 2025, we were awarded that uh that that contract with the city.

We're grateful to be here with you, and we're grateful to have been awarded this.

So performance contracting, for those of you that may not be familiar with it, is actually allowed for governmental units.

It's RSMO 8.231.

It's a state statute.

And performance contracting is designed for exactly the kind of project that we have here with the Armory Project.

Before I go further, it's very important to say that we're up here doing this with you all tonight.

But it's been very inclusive process with the city.

We've had multiple meetings with city staff, many of the people or some of the people are here tonight.

And we want to thank those people because we've had a lot of people involved with this, a lot of different departments from public works to parks and rec and uh various people.

So we're here.

We're here as an inclusive part of this process that was developed by the city.

Armory was built in 1939.

It's historic.

It is Art Deco, and it is built like a tank.

The Armory is.

It is incredibly strong.

That facility is a fortress, hence the name, the Armory.

So it was last remodeled in 2000.

The heating and cooling equipment was replaced back in 2000, making it 26 years old.

It's at the end of its useful life.

So parts are becoming challenging to obtain.

More importantly than that, it's becoming very expensive to keep this equipment running.

We in the project, we have our our heating and cooling systems, we have LED lighting that's that's included in this project.

There were other measures that were evaluated that are not included in this project, such as solar, water source heat pumps, water conservation measures, and phantom loads.

We evaluated those things for the armory, and then we brought this back to the city and we discussed it, and those were not included in this project, primarily because the return on investment was poor compared to what what we're delivering here tonight.

So in summary, it's a little bit over $2 million.

And the total savings is 165, a little over 165,000.

That's your first year.

And the OM savings are based on multi-year averages of service agreements, three-year service agreements, and then the actual maintenance costs outside of that.

Performance contracting, that graph that you see on the left there describes performance contracting to the T, and it's leveraging the energy operations and maintenance savings to generate capital for the project.

That's what this project does.

So Amoresco's design build delivery model.

Amoresco holds 100% of the risk.

There's one contract between the city and Amoresco.

There's multiple trades involved in this, but those trades, we hold those contracts for that, reducing the risk for the City of Columbia.

Single source responsibility is on Amoresco.

One throat to choke, is kind of the old saying that maybe some of you have heard.

That falls on us.

Also, through this process, there is no change orders.

Very unique for uh an organization, but there's no change orders involved.

And with that, I want to say thank you.

Yep, thank you, Dana.

I appreciate that.

Was that five minutes?

Yeah, it was five minutes.

It was fast.

Does anybody else from the public wish to speak?

Yep.

Hi, I'm Denny Perez.

Um I won't be doxing myself publicly, but um I just want to say I want to commend just how transparent and well-organized this information is and that um this is kind of like a lot of things that people want to see when it comes to um preserving uh third spaces and public spaces because that is very vital and important, and this is what people mean by investing in the people, um, even though this is part of property.

This is property that benefits the people, and we I would love to see more of that.

Thank you.

Thank you, Dan.

Would anyone else from the public wish to speak on the proposed efficiency improvements at the armory?

Seeing none, I'll close that public comment because I already closed the public hearing.

Uh any council comments on this.

Yeah, Valerie.

It's in my word.

And I hate to let it go by with no comments.

Um Thanks for doing this project.

I love it.

I love to see our facilities updated.

Um more greenly and saving on our energy.

Um I appreciate the investment.

Any other counsel comments?

All right.

Um I'll make a motion to proceed with the proposed construction of HVAC and interior lighting improvements at the Armory Sports and Recreation Center, and allow for the design and construction of the proposed project using a guaranteed energy cost savings contract.

Do I have a second?

Second second.

Okay.

Uh all those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

All right.

Appreciate it.

Thank you all.

All right, moving on.

Our final public hearing of this evening.

Uh Sheila, will you please read public hearing 1826 and the corresponding resolution 10426?

Public hearing 1826 is the consideration of the FY2026 Community Development Block Grant, CDBG and Home Investment Partnership Annual Action Plan.

And Council Bill 10426 is a resolution adopting the FY2026 Community Development Block Grant, C D BG and Home Investment Partnerships Program, Home Annual Action Plan.

Is it the main one?

It's not.

Sure why it's not there.

Um I can do it.

I have my I trust you, Bill.

Yes.

You can wing it.

Sure.

Thank you.

I apologize for that.

Um good evening, uh, Mayor Council, uh, is Bill Rat, Director of Uh Housing and Neighborhood Services.

So our annual action plan is something that we are required to submit to HUD each year.

Um it covers both our community development block grant, uh CDBG, and our home investment partnership program, our home funds.

Um it's part of the five-year consolidated plan.

And that is something that HUD requires us to submit uh every five years to kind of outline what our plans and objectives are uh based on community uh input and feedback uh for the next five years.

Um the current plan that we're in now covers calendar years 2025 through 2029 as our funding with HUD is on a calendar year as opposed to the city's fiscal year.

And each year an annual action plan is required to be submitted uh for all five years of the consolidated plan.

Um the council approved the current consolidated plan back in July of July 7th, rather, 2025.

So 2026 is year two of the consolidated plan.

Oh, do you?

Okay.

Sorry.

Do you want me to keep going watching?

Okay.

So just to give you a timeline on the plan, um we did uh a survey to solicit opinion for the funding priorities.

Uh that was done back in February 2025.

It ran for about a month, uh, a little bit longer than the month, about six weeks or five weeks rather, um, ended on 331 of 2025.

Uh, there are 55 responses to the survey.

And uh those survey results were shared with the housing and community development commission or HCDC um, you know, which is appointed by the council.

And uh that was done on April 16th of 2025.

And then uh along those lines on that same date, the application process was announced to where that we would be soliciting for applications.

And then our um applicants all made presentations before the housing and community development commission.

Um they did that in in two groups.

Uh one was on May 14th to 25, the other one was a May uh 21st of 25.

And this afforded an opportunity for the uh commission to ask questions of the um applicants and seek some clarification on some of the things.

Thank you.

Okay.

And then uh the funding uh recommendations uh were presented uh to the council on August 14th of last year, and those uh recommendations were approved by the council.

Uh so um just continuing the timeline.

Um HUD announced uh final allocation amounts on uh April 3rd of this year for our 2026 funding.

And as part of that, um, they they will issue a grant agreement, but it may be quite some time before we get that agreement.

Uh for example, um we just received our 2025 agreement on January 6th of this year from HUD.

So it'll be a while before we we know or before we actually get those grant agreements, but the amounts are are locked in.

Um HUD also then requires 60 days after the award announcement that we have to submit our annual action plan.

Um we do have to issue another public comment period, um, and that runs through May 26 of this year.

Uh and then our plan has to be submitted uh to HUD by June 3rd.

If we don't submit the plan, we do risk losing the funding from HUD.

And I think that would have ramifications not only for this year, but you know, in future years as well.

So our funding amounts that we received are a little over a million dollars in block grant funding and about 488,000 in home funding.

Now both of those reflect 5.6% decreases from last year.

And while that's disappointing, it's better than the fact that elimination at the federal level of these programs were proposed.

So they were not eliminated fortunately, but we did uh sustain a funding cut.

These are all of the projects that were um approved uh for funding on the block grant side um uh the funding recommendations that were approved.

Um we did have to adjust them to reflect the um decreased funding amount, um, but we didn't take that from the the agencies, we kind of adjusted the funding uh there for programs that were administering internally.

And then this is the same thing with the home programs uh or the home funding amounts.

Uh we adjusted those accordingly.

Um and I will be happy to answer any questions we all may have.

Thank you, Bill.

Any questions for Bill?

Yeah, Vera.

Can you explain?

So the the public comment period doesn't end until May 26.

Um so I understand the public hearing being tonight.

Can you explain why the vote is tonight when the public comment period has not yet expired?

Well, we wouldn't be able to um utilize any comments if we if we uh you know went to beyond May 26th, because that's already been published.

Um, since all these um projects have already been the funding recommendations have been approved, um I'm not sure that it would change any outcomes other than if like we were uh had to restart the whole process, uh which would put us in danger of you know uh not receiving the funds from HUD.

Um the other thing I would say is that with the timing on this, it does give us ample amount of time to get the plan into HUD.

Um there's a lot of things that we have to do uh to submit the plan to HUD.

It's not simply just pressing a button, but you know, we do have to include all the public comments that is an attachment.

Uh so any comments that we receive here tonight or any comments that we receive online um from our uh public comment period, we do have to submit those to HUD and explain uh the comments and whether or not that we accept those.

I guess well, perhaps that's going into comment rather than question.

So any other questions for Bill on the proposed CDBG and home annual action plan.

Yeah, Christina.

Hey.

Um so my question would be how did we end up in a situation where the comments would happen to where it was after?

Like, is there a way we can prevent this in the future, or is it just the way that when it opens up, you know, like how do we how do we fix that?

It's it's basically timing with HUD and when they release things and and when they notify us when we have to submit things and turn things in.

Um they've changed the process a little bit uh this year from previous years, so we're just trying to adjust to that and and work through that.

Okay.

So we this isn't something that would happen routinely or expect to happen anyway.

I don't think so, no.

Thank you.

And I think my only question, I oh, sorry, well, hold on.

Yeah.

I mean you can okay.

I did have one more one more question, which is um with the public comment period still being open.

Um I assume that means it's available like on B heard or something like that.

Are we doing anything to notify people?

The the public comment is still open.

The vote has already happened.

I I wouldn't want people to feel they are potentially influencing a vote that has happened in the past.

Sure.

Um we do have it on the city's webpage that we're accepting comments.

Um, you know, um we haven't put on there that you know, depending on the vote that that would happen.

Um we could look into doing that if that's something council would request.

Um but yeah, um, we we do accept comments and we've also we did put advertisement in the newspaper as well that we're accepting comments.

Any other questions for staff?

Yeah, Valerie.

Yeah.

Production goals.

We have construction, renovation, and expansion or acquisition of 10 public facilities serving homeless populations.

I was wondering if we know what those projects are.

It seems like a tall order.

What 10 product what 10 projects do we have going on for that?

So those aren't projects that are occurring with C BG and home funding.

One of the things that you have to do with the action plan is discuss prevention initiatives and things like that.

So that information would have been provided by the health department and other organizations.

But it doesn't uh we're required to put it in the action plan, but uh there isn't CDBG or home funding allocated towards those.

I don't know the list of those projects, so we do we name the goal of 10 public facilities?

Yes.

Okay.

So I guess I'm not understanding why we named the goal and don't have funding allocated to it.

Um or if our goal needs to change based on that?

Well, I'll say this that um a lot of cities that get hub funding.

This is the action plan is um something that HUD asks specific questions on, and we have to address those things.

A lot of cities get funding directly from HUD as part of um an entitlement community for homelessness prevention, like emergency solutions grants and um you know hop law funding.

So we have to include that in our plan, even though we don't have block grant and home funding.

So you know, larger cities get all four of those funding allocations, but Columbia only receives the two.

But we still have to address uh what we intend to do with those.

Can I ask kind of related?

Do you put these in here in case they were to all of a sudden give us more money?

You know what I mean?

Like so you're answering that question that a larger city has to do that if they were to give us those sort of entitlement funds, we would like to build 10.

Is that I think that's part of the equation.

I I think it's also um a lot of times best case scenario, you know, like hey, we hope that we will get this, and we hope we can do these things over the next five years.

So it's not a firm thing, but it's something that we hope that we can do.

So do we choose to say 10?

Or like is that a choice that we make when we enter in this?

Because I know that this application procedure is different than others where we have more um control over how the information is entered, I guess.

Yes, that's something we would have put in there ourselves.

Okay.

I'm really hoping to get two.

Right.

Really hoping to get two.

Um okay.

All right.

Any other council questions for staff?

Do we have any sidewalk projects planned?

I know that that's been hard to get funding for.

There were not any sidewalk applications that were submitted for 2026 funding.

Okay.

Thanks.

But we do have a goal of trying to, correct?

If I look on that same list, there's the completion of a construction uh sidewalk project serving 800 persons.

So that is that another goal there, but again, no funding.

Over the five years.

Yes.

Okay.

Funding and no application for it.

Yeah.

All right.

Any other council questions?

All right, I'll go ahead and open up the public hearing.

Would anyone from the public wish to speak on uh 1826, uh, the 2026 CDBG and home annual action plan?

Hi, Danny again.

Um maybe this is my neurodivergence talking, but I'm a bit confused because the whole like the public comment thing or the um fact that it's open until um later May, but we have to vote on it now.

Um is confusing because I know that there's gonna be people who aren't gonna see this meeting until later because as recorded and they're like busy doing things.

So maybe I'm just misinterpreting, but that sounds like even though I understand the urgency that does show a bit of incompetence on the lack of insecrety uh if I'm if if that wording is correct for that.

Um I also um confused about the whole 10 slot thing, um, especially when it comes to like potential programs for the homeless, and then like is was there efforts to communicate to the homeless about their input?

Do they even know that this is happening on their behalf?

Also, you said something about a newspaper in the 21st century.

Were there other digital means?

Because I know plenty of young people who don't do newspaper.

So I'm I'm guessing I'm just confused as what communications besides the be heard and newspaper and reaching out for this.

And maybe it's just the way the information is being presented to me that I'm confused.

But um, as you can tell, I'm I'm actually kind of confused about this whole thing.

Thank you.

Anyone else from the public wish to speak?

Tracy, are you coming up to talk?

Okay.

We're talking about the communication strategy, right?

Thank you.

We're we're talking about the yeah, the proposed CDBG home annual action plan.

Okay.

Anyone else from the public wish to speak on the proposed 2026 C D BG and home annual action plan?

I'll go ahead and close the public comment.

I think I'll ask for Bill, will you um go over again the outreach and the role of the commission in the proposed action plan?

Okay.

So one of the things we have to do is uh we start with the survey.

Um and uh the timing of the related to that survey is all uh approved by our housing and community development commission.

And um the survey is is available online.

Um we received 55 responses uh to the survey.

I think 78 people actually filled out the survey, but only like 55 uh fully responded and submitted comments.

Um we do provide all of those responses to the commission.

Um and they uh review those.

And uh they also um I should back up a second, they also approve the questions for the survey to begin with, um, to make sure that you know we're reaching as many people as we can with the survey.

Um and then once those results are um you know compiled, um those are all shared with the housing community development commission.

And then uh after they review those and approve those, um then they instruct staff to proceed with issuing the um applications and putting those out on the street uh so to speak to where uh nonprofits can apply for funding for us or from us rather.

Um and then uh each of the applicants are invited to give a presentation for funding.

So we kind of break it up into two categories.

Um first is the city programs that are applying for funding, and then uh the nonprofits that are applying for funding.

So the May 14th day uh were the city programs applying for funding, and then uh May 21st date was uh the nonprofits.

Um and then uh the council, I'm sorry, the uh HCDC uh reviews the recommendations and then uh and subsequent meetings after that, um, and then they make a presentation before the council uh saying these are the projects we recommend for funding.

And that happened on uh August uh 14th of last year.

Um and then just along with the timing, then um, you know, there wasn't a lot of activity between then um because we when we when we put together our uh action plan, um we can't ever finalize it until we know what the actual dollar amounts are for are from HUD, and we did not receive that until uh April 3rd of this year.

So then uh once those grant agreements or once the um allocations are announced, uh then uh by HUD regulations, we have 60 days to submit our action plan to them.

So if I'm understanding that's part of the issues with the syncrecy of the timing is because of the federal government's I don't want to say incompetency like you referred to, but I can allude to it as far as the timing of when these things come for.

So in reality, our public period for this started last year about the potentials of doing it through that.

And I think one thing that's probably I would probably ask is before your time bill, but um when it comes to um maybe it's the consolidated plan where we have a lot of those high-level goals, and those were developed with focus groups of the different interested parties, correct?

That is correct.

So like we actually did have um community members who are experiencing homelessness serve on those focus groups that kind of set those goals and gave those actions.

But that was again probably a couple years ago in the Yeah, there were a lot of stakeholders involved, a lot of folks interviewed.

Uh and we do that how often, how often is that updated?

Every five years.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Any other council questions or council comments for staff on this one?

Yeah, I'm gonna go um, I don't know who is heard.

So Valley O'U because you're at the end, right?

Valerie V.

I comment because I know um Danny's public comment about the um 10 programs.

I wanted to specify um my questioning about that item.

Um it was construction of 10 facilities serving um persons experiencing homelessness.

Um I am sure that we work with more than 10 programs and 10 facilities is a tall order for us.

Um but I'm glad that we aim high, and maybe they'll give us magical funding.

Yeah.

Vera.

So uh I I appreciate the clarity that this undesirable scheduling situation is because of dates we are somewhat forced into by the federal government, which does not take into account the timing of our meetings where we are actually able to vote on things.

I do still have concerns about advertising open public comment on an item that the public is not able to influence in any way.

Um that does that does concern me for um potentially setting up frustrations, misunderstandings, people thinking that might be similar for public comment in the future when this is a one-off situation.

Um I mean, my my initial thought is we do have another council meeting before that June 3rd deadline.

I know that that then creates an incredibly fast turnaround that I imagine would be stressful and hard to navigate for staff.

Um so my other thought is making sure that we are very, very transparent in all of that public comment messaging saying public comment is open, the vote has passed.

The public comment is not going to affect the decision made.

Um I'm curious what other council thinks, because again, my preference would be um that we don't vote on this until we are done receiving public comment.

Um so moving it to that June 1st meeting.

Um I'm curious what the staff feedback would be on how that would affect your timeline.

Um but the very least I'd like to see clarity in how we advertise public comment.

Can I clarify your request?

So potentially the request to table it, but or more of also could there be something on that where public comment is received online that has that sort of statement on it.

Yeah, saying that I like I see these two potential options, and I'm curious what other people think about them.

Can I ask for clarification from Bill?

So when we submit public comment, you know, to HUD for this, um are we providing like a hyperlink where it's also available online so that like if the person reviewing our submission could also go to the hyperlink and see maybe any additional public comment that have come in since May 18th.

Is that something that we could do as well?

Yes, we could do that.

Like if it's kept open online when we're submitting it, we can be like, and for any additional that came in after this time, please visit the URL.

Yeah, we could we could specify that in our action plan as well.

Okay.

Yeah.

Okay.

Additional, yeah, council questions, yeah, Betsy.

Um it seems to me like in the past the problem we've run into is the timing and that the report needs to go in or the request or the whatever needs to go into the federal government.

And I don't think that they are on the same timelines for us as they are for themselves.

And so we've run into this in the past.

Um I think it's a good point you bring up that we need to try and fix that.

But at least in the past, the problem has been that we need to get the paperwork in so that we don't lose this potential funding.

And yet we do want feedback from the citizens.

So in the past, that's been the issue is trying to make all the deadlines.

Christina.

Um so when I asked earlier, I feel like the response was that this probably wouldn't happen again, but with Betsy's comment, it sounds like it's pretty standard.

Can you guys clarify for me?

I'm not sure that that we had be heard five years ago when this happened.

But I don't but I do know that there were surveys that went out.

So I'm and I'm not um I I don't look at things quite the same as you guys, so I'm not quite as oriented, I guess, for this kind of thing.

Yeah, I I would say that HUD you know doesn't they require approval by the local governing uh body.

Um they don't get into you know they don't allow us to you know adjust things for um you know whatever the the local uh body wants to do and that's when I say us I mean all the grantees you know nationwide.

Um so um yeah this has happened before um to your point um but I think this year is a little bit different um in that um you know it's kind of they're enforcing things a little more harshly um you know and we're just kind of locked into these dates uh by you know submitting them by the time we actually get the awards and the award letters um you know we have to move very quickly.

Okay.

So I think kind of referring back to what Vera was saying earlier.

For me, I definitely feel like we need to make sure we're maintaining that process so that it's transparent.

We can audit it.

So if there are significant concerns that come in, I don't want to have voted in a way that could have been changed based on those comments.

Um so for me, I'm I'm okay with tabling it.

Um but I still don't know that I fully understand the impact to what that means for staff.

Like does that make sense what I'm asking?

I I think my question for staff would be more of like what would change.

Yeah.

Like, you know, like I mean, I think the comments, I think the way that I've seen the comments in the past is that A, those are comments, most of those are from kind of last year that guided the process for changed actions.

Right.

What are the typical kind of comments once the action plan is out that could potentially change what it is we're voting on to send it forward?

Yeah.

And then to and then my other thing is kind of like to the point of I I feel like we have a C D BG HUD comp plan every like six months of something.

So I feel like we have opportunities to update things.

Am I correct?

We can, yeah.

Um I would say that um the typical comments are you know, we need more of this type of program, or we need uh this program, or I'd like to see this funded.

And and they kind of run all over the place.

Some of them aren't even relevant uh to block rant or or home.

Uh like you mean not relevant, not eligible for funding from CDE to your home.

Okay, so not relevant as in there's a need for it.

But yeah.

Okay.

Someone had uh said, you know, uh not this round, but like we need a new Hardy's um, you know, restaurant.

So you know that's not something that we could do with uh the funding from HUD.

Um but yeah, so those are the the typical comments.

Um it's not like oh you shouldn't fund this for this amount, or you know, you should do this for this amount.

It's more generic in support of something, or maybe you all should consider funding an activity like this, which may or may not be block grant eligible or home eligible.

Do you want to speak to the question about um uh if it were approved at the evening of June 1st?

Yeah.

So um that would give us essentially, you know, a day and a half maybe to get the plan all together to submit it.

Um there's a lot of things that we have to do um uh as far as actually the work to get the plan to HUD.

Um we have to um you'll make any revisions to the plan itself.

We have to make a lot of or upload a lot of attachments.

We have to kind of collate all and summarize all the comments and things like that.

Um so there's a lot of uh writing that we would have to do um, you know, to get that uh ready to be submitted on time.

Is it possible that it could be?

Sorry.

Um Valerie.

Yeah, you know, I had a couple of questions, and one of them is just my experience with BeHeerd as a site too.

Um, um I see that there's a summary of key dates in the pane to the right on beheard at all times.

Did they have the information of when this meeting would be?

Is this a key date?

Um I don't know if that was in there.

I have to check.

I'm sorry, I don't have the answer to that.

Okay, that's okay.

Um, I think it's pretty helpful if they knew, you know, if that was outlined ahead of time where they were making their comments that it would be open longer, but this was a key date.

Um I feel like there's a lot of avenues for giving input on this.

And when I look at this type of application and the information that's in it, I I do struggle to see um what it changes because I yeah, because the types of goals are very direct, I'll say.

Um and the uploading information um onto the portal.

Um having done that, it's awful.

And it's risky to not leave a lot of time to do it.

Very risky.

Yeah, I think I think that's that's my concern too on the um on the delay of the vote for it because of the funding that we do, and we're already seeing HUD propose this year a complete elimination of CDBG and home funding.

So I I think maybe uh if if you're like the idea of maybe we have possibilities to to have that at the top of the public comment about the point about the council has already voted on this, we'll send it and including the URL for where HUD can see if there's any additional because the worst thing I would hate is that we get to June 1st and there's been no additional public comment.

And then or or yeah, or we don't have court.

You know what I mean?

Like I think that's my bigger concern is that issue.

Yeah.

So I I would say the same.

I like, and also having done mini grant reportings, I know what a pain that process can be, and I wouldn't want to put you into a limited time frame that you did not set for yourself.

Um I do think both making sure it is very clear while also saying these comments will be included in the report and can also affect future decisions if not this specific vote.

Um I would also like to make sure that in the future, knowing that if the knocking on wood, this funding continues, we may run into a similar time frame issue again that in the future we make sure on public comment it says public comment is open until but the vote happens on.

Um so that I I hope there is no one out there that was thinking I had something really important to say, but I'm not gonna say it until the 26th.

Um that would have been unfortunate.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Does that give kind of clear suggested directions on that?

Is that okay, like how like this idea?

And it might be, yeah, I think um I I assume probably part of your shortened time.

Does this have to go to the commission before it comes to us?

So they have to be able to meet a quorum as well.

Yeah, before they already did uh last on the 13th.

Okay.

So I imagine that probably also plays a role in a border commission being able to meet.

Okay.

Any other questions?

I'm sorry, I should have put that on the slide.

Yeah, it's okay.

Any other council questions or comments on this one?

Okay.

Um Sheila, we um Sheila, will you please call roll on resolution 10426?

Council Bill 10426, Ms.

Carroll.

Yes.

Ms.

Elwood?

Yes.

Ms.

Sample?

Yes.

Ms.

Hartman.

Miss Peters.

Yes.

Ms.

Buffalo?

Yes.

All right.

Thank you.

All right.

Moving on to old business.

Um Sheila, will you please read Bill 3726?

Council Bill 3726 is an ordinance amending chapter 16 of the city code by adding a new division 22 related to the regulation of electronic gaming machines and fixing the time when this ordinance shall become effective second reading.

Do we have a staff report?

Oh, and I think Albert might be coming out to switch your um slideshow.

There he is.

The magic is coming out of behind.

Becky, my we don't have a slideshow on this.

So this was um tabled at the city council's March 2nd, 2026 meeting to this date.

Um since that date, Attorney General Catherine Hanaway has definitely definitively declared that video lottery terminals to be illegal.

Um the AG's office has begun to actively investigate and commence efforts against operators, manufacturers, and retail stores involved with the activity.

Um I understand that I believe as of today there are no longer any of these machines being operated in the city of Columbia, but Chief Schluby, you may be able to give a more accurate update on that.

Yes, so we uh assisted at the request of Missouri State Highway Patrol and the Attorney General's office assisted them uh about a week ago with uh going to the Eagle Stop at 170 1704 North Providence and seizing the machines that were there and in operation at the time.

Um the only other location that we knew of at that time because we've been going in and auditing and kind of keeping an updated spreadsheet was we be smoking down on uh 4th Street downtown.

Uh my staff went by there around 10 a.m.

this morning and confirmed that the machines are present, but they are not turned on.

So as far as I know, right now at this moment, we don't have any machines operating in the city, unless there's some businesses that we just didn't find, which of course we didn't search every business in town, but um I think we have a pretty good idea of where they were mostly located.

Right?

Any other stuff?

Yeah, I'll follow up on that and say so city's position is that these machines are illegal currently under state law and that they should be enforced under state law.

Um that being said, the ordinance that's before you tonight would allow in the event, you know, at any time moving forward that more similar type machines do pop up and that the argument that is made is that these are not gambling devices.

This would allow for enforcement against those machines.

Any questions from council?

Yeah, Valerie.

Are machines that are present but not turned on a violation, or are they allowed to not be used?

I believe it's like I think I'm trying to think of what the exact wording is under state law, but I think it's the operation maintenance.

So I don't if they're not being used or operating, if they're just a a pretty decoration in the corner.

Um I don't know that they would be violating any state law necessarily, but I I don't want to say that definitively without the statute in front of me.

Fair enough.

Any other questions for staff on this one?

No?

All right.

Would anyone from the public wish to speak on Bill 3726?

Hi, good evening.

My name is Tyler Travers, and I'm here to speak in favor of this ordinance as a resident of Ward 4.

Uh within the past couple of years, several cities in Missouri have passed ordinances like this prohibiting these predatory machines, including Maryland Heights, Woodlawn, North Kansas City, Kansas City, Riverside, Springfield, Lowry, LaGrange, and several others.

Um, as mentioned uh within the past year or so, the state attorney general has uh reiterated that these are illegal.

And she has enforced a statewide crackdown with local law enforcement, including with the St.

Louis uh County Prosecutor, the Dunklin County prosecutor, and as recent as last week with the Columbia City Police Department.

Passing this ordinance tonight stays what we already know.

These machines are illegal, but it does allow local law enforcement to remove the machines that might still remain here.

Um I also would like counsel to please recognize that moving forward, the state legislature will keep trying to legalize these things.

Um the bill the past couple years only passed the House by one vote each year.

And thankfully, this year, every state representative and senator in Boone County did vote no on that ordinance, thankfully.

Um moving forward, I would encourage council to please coordinate with other local governments to lobby the legislature to implement a grandfather clause.

So if these are legalized statewide, the ordinances like this will remain in effect for all those cities that I listed earlier, and you should you choose to pass this tonight.

Um I also want to uh state the support of someone who could not be here tonight for this ordinance, Mr.

Darren Priest, executive director of the Central Missouri Community Action, couldn't be here, but he wanted me to share that he is supportive of this.

And thank you all for bringing this forward, and I'm fully supportive.

Thank you.

Thank you, Tyler.

Would anyone else from the public wish to speak on Bill 3726?

All right, I'll go ahead and close the public comment.

Uh any additional council comments.

No, seeing none.

I'll just say um I'm surprised that the state did something.

I mean, I'm very happy that this state did something that we were also proposing locally.

So thank you for that.

Sheila, will you please call uh roll on uh Bill 3726?

Council Bill 3726, Ms.

Carroll.

Yes.

Ms.

Elvid?

Yes.

Ms.

Sample?

Yes, Ms.

Hartman.

Yes.

Ms.

Peters.

Yes.

Ms.

Buffalo?

Yes.

All right.

Moving on to Sheila, will you please read Bill 11926A?

Council Bill 11926 as amended as an ordinance calling a special election in the City of Columbia, Missouri to be held on Tuesday, August 4, 2026, on the question whether to impose an additional sales tax of 1% for the purpose of improving city public safety services, directing notification of the election authority, describing the form of the notice of election, directing the city manager to provide a detailed report to the council on the revenues and expenditures associated with the proceeds generated by the sales tax as part of the annual budget process and fixing the time when this ordinance shall become effective.

Do we have a staff report?

Small technical difficulty, sorry.

We have the black screen of death on ours, so hopefully that's not a good thing.

Sorry, I had this set up and got lobbed out some kind of way.

And now two-step verification.

I am very sorry.

Yeah, sorry, we added some slides based on feedback from you all from the last hearing and questions that we got.

So some of these may look the same, some of them are brand new.

So the discussion points we wanted to cover were the citizen survey based priorities, our public safety statistics, our public safety priorities, the general fund outlook, sales tax history and projections, and then the proposed one percent sales and use tax.

This uh the seat is extremely warm.

That was stressful.

Uh we'll start uh basically what you inquired uh about what what type of research had been done thus far uh from the community.

We do have some results from a survey where you can see here the items that were identified as high priority, very high priority and medium priority public uh streets was the very high priority police and fire as well, most important ranked very close to the top on the citizen satisfaction survey.

And that this is our very last survey that we did in the fall of 2025.

So the next slide is about how Columbia uh kind of pairs up against uh the Plains region, what the survey company for terms of the plain replains region versus the entire United States.

And you'll notice there's some specific metrics that are circled in red.

Um one of those is quality of police and fire services, uh, which we are behind.

Um the blue bar represents Columbia, the red being the Plains and the yellow being the U.S.

Obviously, we're pretty significantly behind on that metric.

And then the overall quality of city services is similar, and then the enforcement of city codes and ordinances was another one that was noted.

And then uh question three on the survey identified in totality of the survey, the importance of police and fire services being predominantly everybody's first choice, and you can see all the way down to the third choice.

So just reinforces um the picture that we were trying to paint.

So another question on the survey was for folks to rank items that they believe should receive the most emphasis over the next two years.

And so the number one uh by a wide margin was in the increasing of the number of police, the first choice is the blue bar that you see, so um a little over about I'd say 33 to 34 percent of people chose that as their first choice.

And then the the efforts towards um focusing that emphasis, obviously prevention of crime uh was at the top sixty-five percent, and you can see how it breaks down throughout, specifically looking towards the majority is certainly law enforcement.

Yeah, visibility of police downtown was a strong number two, and then the overall quality of the police department engagement, responsiveness, and enforcing local traffic laws, and visibility of police and how quickly we respond.

So this was another community survey question, and it was do you think that the City of Columbia has enough police officers and firefighters?

69 percent said no, 18 percent said they don't know, and 13 percent said yes.

And question 18, uh would you support the city in pursuit of an additional tax increase to increase the number of police and fire fighters in the City of Columbia?

Uh overwhelmingly there, 55 percent said yes, uh and 15 percent said I don't know, likely needed more information to make a uh decision.

But that to me was very telling.

So after we got the survey results, one of the things we were asked to do was make some recommendations based on the feedback.

And so these were the bullet points that we came up with at that time, increasing the number of sworn officers to support community policing and crime prevention as well as officer wellness, reinstitute the downtown unit at CPD, improve safety in medians and roadways, uh, site lines and visibility along trails and parks through vegetation management, and then also enhancing park signage to facilitate clear and timely reporting of suspicious or illegal activities in the parks.

So it just from uh from a large uh picture, we step back and we look at the growth of the city.

Since 2000, the population has grown by nearly 50,000 residents.

That's an increase of uh 58 percent.

We have added 15 additional square miles for a total of 28 percent.

With that, uh Chief Schlute's measure that often is used in comparison highlights that we have got 1.49 officers per 1,000 in 2,000 in year 2,000, and now that's dropped to 1.39 per 1,000 residents.

Compared to the uh full-time law enforcement officer average in the United States cities is 2.3 per 1,000.

In Missouri only, it's 2.2.

So I'm sorry, Midwest cities, it's 2.2.

You could probably speak to this better, but uh again, that's pretty telling from the questions that you asked last time.

So this chart was in the previous presentation, but it really outlines where we sit amongst um some of our peer cities here in Missouri.

So as you can see, we're at 1.39 officers per 1,000.

It also has uh the police budget listed in there.

Um we are the lowest by a pretty wide margin.

Um obviously St.

Louis is a little bit of an outlier because of their decreases in population, but um also the only other city that does not have a public safety tax is St.

Louis, and they are, if you've been watching the news, having some very um tense conversations about funding.

So this one's a comparison between uh college cities, those are peer cities that we look at pretty frequently for a variety of reasons.

Uh some of these cities are in our benchmark cities group, some of them are not.

Um but this is also a good uh kind of a snapshot of where we sit within this group.

So you can also look, I think the number of students in the population is very interesting in this.

Um Columbia, South Carolina has 385 officers and not not a huge population more than us.

Boulder has more on this list.

Uh Lawrence is actually Lawrence and College Station are the only ones that are a little lower than us.

Um would expect that since Lawrence uh has 35,000, 40,000 less people.

Um college station, I'm not, I couldn't entirely speak to why that's so close, but a lot of these Gainesville, Florida, which I we compare ourselves to with some frequency has 300 officers.

Springfield, Missouri, just down I-44 has 360 officers.

And from the fire department's perspective, I think one of the questions that that I heard was how how do how do we measure excellence and how do we measure improvement?

It's a busy slide.

The only thing that I really want uh everybody to put into context is that with the additional 42 firefighters, we do reach our accreditation standard for performance where it really matters.

The EMS rescue, uh, we will uh become compliant with our goal, which is uh national standard as well as fire and hazardous condition.

We're expecting around a 25 percent improvement in overall deployment for effective response force if we were to do that today with 16 uh with a little over 16,000 emergency incidents.

That we we we don't do the one, we don't do the same type of uh analysis that police officers or the police services do.

Ours is really based on deployment and outcome.

So if you know, obviously everybody could hold our breath.

If you can hold your breath for four minutes, um good for you.

Most people can't.

So we want to be on the scene and in four or five minutes, and there's a there's a there's a method to uh calculating that survival and outcome, and it's all related back to an NFPA standard.

So these are some of our priorities should the tax get passed and placed on the ballot and text passed.

Um, core core patrol operations and scheduling, I can't underscore the importance of that.

And that's really just a fancy way of saying properly staffing patrols so that we can keep officers in their assigned areas, which obviously underpins the whole idea of community policing, and then also hopefully get them off of a 12-hour workday.

Uh traffic enforcement, we get asked about traffic enforcement regularly, probably daily.

Um we have one person in the traffic unit.

At one time, this organization, I think had as many as eight officers in the traffic unit.

We had motorcycles.

Um we did a lot of proactive enforcement.

Uh I think that directly relates to Division Zero goals.

We had a crime prevention unit that went away over a decade ago or more.

Um they were community services.

They did everything from youth academy to uh crime prevention and outreach in our neighborhoods and with our businesses.

And then just the overall capacity of investigative needs.

Um that caseload just continues to grow.

The complexity of cases continues to grow with the amount of evidence, digital evidence, data, uh everything that we have to look at, those needs just continue to the work outpaces the staff that we have.

And then specialty teams.

So we we get asked to do things like reinstitute the downtown unit.

Um we have four officers assigned to the parks.

That's in no way, shape, or form sufficient for a community with this many parks and trails.

Um the airport, it's awesome that the airport is doing so well in expanding, but we also only have four officers assigned there.

And with the increased number of flights and times, we're gonna have to look at capacity there.

And that's not even including some of the other things we would like to do big picture-wise if we just had more capacity.

And in fire, like I mentioned, the 42 additional firefighters will equate to uh increased or or better outcomes, life saves, injury prevented, sales uh sales improved.

Uh also just to put this in context, when I talk about a emergency response force, it's assembling all those firefighters needed for a situation at the same time so simultaneous tasks can be performed.

Whether it's ventilating, search and rescue, fire control, all of those have to be timed out for someone to survive, including the firefighters.

So that staffing on that individual unit really does matter.

So just to kind of put a bow on this part.

We've identified the the uh the public's desire.

We know that we have more people, we've grown in geography, and uh we know what our history is.

We're asking for uh assistance in closing the gap that we've identified.

So we identified the priorities for how we would envision using this funding, and obviously the very first one is staffing, additional police officers and firefighters.

We'd like to hire 50 police officers over four years.

Um we could do it more quickly than that, frankly, um, under this plan, but that's how long we would probably estimate uh given the capacity that we have.

And then 42 firefighters over four years.

Um you've heard me talk many times before about the need for a new police headquarters building.

Um we thankfully have a city facility that would be uh able to support that endeavor without having to do all new construction and find land and all that goes along with that.

Uh need more police vehicles when we have more police officers.

Um Chief has renovation of three current fire stations on that list, and then two new planned fire stations, including the fire apparatus.

And then we both need a true technology plan.

Um the technology that's coming at us is fast and furious, and every time something comes along, we have to come to you all with our handout and say, hey, we think this is something we really need.

And a lot of that technology, I think kind of branches off into two areas, which is improving efficiency for the folks that work on our teams and helping them do their jobs better, and then another branch of that is just strictly towards safety.

And then obviously the big big thing that has been out there for a while is the priority of stabilizing the retirement fund.

Matthews talked about before the funding gap in the pensions for both police and fire, and the total unfunded actuarial accrued liability as of September was a very large number, almost 149 million dollars.

We are making some headway with that, but this would allow us to make uh additional payments, I think, towards what we're able to do right now and hopefully get out from under this more quickly than we are currently.

So the priority timeline cost, you can see the technology plan would be an annual contribution or an annual prioritization, station four and twenty-seven, and obviously I won't belabor the individual items and um but we do have the projects built and built out, the deployment for the fire department and the the um the futuring of the sites and uh expected arterials, all those are are part of our plan as well as the renovations.

Okay.

Okay, so we're gonna talk about the financial aspects of the public safety tax now.

So um what you see here is we had some requests for kind of provide a little bit of a history of our general funds.

So we go back to 2020.

This slide is looking at all the revenue sources for the general fund.

Kind of the big highlight is in 2020 we brought in about 83 million or a little under 84 million dollars, and then by 2024, we brought in a little under 124 million.

The biggest driver of that is our sales tax and the implementation of our use tax that took place in uh 2022.

And then the expenditures.

So the expenditures in 2020 was about 84 million or 84.7 million dollars.

Uh that increased pretty substantially by 2024 to 127.6 million dollars.

Um one of the biggest drivers is those first two lines, the wages and benefit benefits, uh, they increased by about 33 percent over that time frame.

So even though our revenues saw pretty major increases, our expenses also increased at a pretty substantial level.

And that bottom line just shows the either excess of or deficiencies or revenues over expenditures.

So we had three good three years where revenues beat expenditures and two years where they fell below.

And finally for the history, um, this is uh kind of a look at our cash balance and our cash above target.

So you can see over that five-year period our cash kind of fluctuated between $30 million and went as low as $14 million.

What is significant is that it kind of trended on a downward directory uh trajectory.

So we started to kind of spin down that additional cash reserve that we had.

So moving on to projections, so we have 2025 actuals and then kind of estimations based off of those for the following years.

Um what we're starting to see is that we saw some pretty substantial growth in our sales tax uh between 22 and 24, and that is falling off in 25.

We actually had a little bit of a decrease.

And what we're expecting to see in future years is about a one to one and a half percent increase in our sales and use tax.

And so you can see in 25 we had a pretty large revenue of 144 million.

A lot the big driver of that was uh litigation from CenturyTell that brought in about uh 14 million dollars.

Uh so we take that out of the 2026 to get a little bit more of a realistic number of where we're gonna be at in 26, and then just kind of slow growth from those years from that year on forward.

So general fund expenditures.

So what we're starting to see and was starting to kind of become evident in 2024 is that our expenses are starting to outpace our revenues.

So just take you to the bottom two lines.

You can see in 2026, we expect to see expenditures about 137 million.

It does go down a little bit in 2027 because we are finally spent down the last of the ARPA money.

But that bottom low line is kind of showing the deficiencies of revenues over expenditure.

So you can see in 2027, if things stay the way they are, we'd have about a $4 million deficit, and it continues to climb every year after that.

And finally for our projections, we have our cash fund uh reserves.

So what we're what we're seeing here is kind of the two highlights is the ending ending available cash and the cash above or below target.

So in 2026, we think we're going to have about 48.6 million million dollars in cash.

But you can see by 2031 that that total cash is just a little under 10 million dollars.

And we fall below our target goal of 20 percent of uh cash above expenses by 2030, and it escalates pretty substantially after that.

This pie graph just kind of shows the major uh revenue sources for the general fund and the kind of the share that each one of them gets.

Just the major highlight is that our sales and use tax takes up just a little under 30 percent of all the revenues we get for the general fund.

And then this this pie graph shows uh kind of the major expenditure categories that are in the general fund.

And as you can see, public safety gets the lion's share at 48.3 percent.

And the final pie graph here shows the FTE, so the the FTTEs for the budget in FY26 with public safety getting 458 F.3 FTEs, by far the largest uh group within the general fund.

Full-time equivalence.

Yes, thank you.

Full-time equivalent.

Okay, so now just a little bit of sales tax history and projections.

So this line graph kind of shows the history of our sales and use tax going back to 2010.

Um at that point it was just a little under uh 40 million dollars.

It kind of had slow but steady growth all the way up to uh about 2018, and then it started to dip off.

The big increase happened in uh 21 and continued on through 2023.

Uh there's a few combination reasons for that.

Uh one was in uh the 22, we got that use tax implemented, but also with COVID, there was a large amount of government stimulus money that entered the economy, and then also inflation.

So all those kind of factors factored into that pretty large rise.

But then you can see in 25 it actually started to decrease.

And like I said earlier, what we're we're expecting to see going forward is that slow kind of steady growth that you saw from like 2010 to 2018.

Uh this kind of just breaks down where we think the sales tax is going to fall for FY26.

Um general fund, we expect to see about 33 million and 5.5 million use tax, and the total would be about 64.8 and a little over 11 million in use tax.

This is just kind of a pie chart breaking down how the sales tax is divided up.

The state gets 4.23, the county 1.75, and then the city gets 2 percent.

Uh one 1% goes to the general fund, and the other portions are divvied up between transportation sales tax, park sales tax, and capital improvement sales tax.

Uh this this is just kind of a breakdown of um the Columbia's sales tax and how it compares to the other ten most populous cities within the within Missouri.

Uh you can see we kind of fall towards the bottom.

Our base tax rate is 7.975 with the city getting uh 2 percent of that.

I want to talk a little bit about uh the proposed 1 percent uh sales and use tax.

So uh the additional general sales and use tax dedicated for public safety, we're anticipating it'll bring in approximately 38 million dollars between the sales and use tax.

Um this will provide revenue for operations, capital, and uh other items in the public safety departments.

And so we will need a vote well, we would need a vote of the public basically to implement uh an additional tax.

Here is what our sales and use tax would look like by fund if the one percent was uh voted on and uh approved.

So it would be an additional $33.8 uh million in sales tax and $5.7 million in use tax.

This is what that breakdown would look like with an additional tax as well.

So uh you see the the two one percent, one for the general fund, and then the general public safety.

Uh you have your transportation sales tax, your parks, and then your capital improvement.

Here's what the change would look like to uh the sales tax rate with the 10 most popular cities.

It would put us in 10th place for the city, I mean in fourth place for the city portion at 3 percent.

Um, and then uh we would be tied for fourth place with Kansas City for uh at 8.9 percent for total sales tax.

So how would we fund the public safety uh initiatives?

So we would we would create a separate fund to account for and segregate police and fire expenses.

We would add that 38 million from the new sales and use tax, and then an additional 60 million and transfer from the general fund, uh, and then an ongoing allocation year over year after that.

Uh one thing that that is very clear is that we would have to allocate money from the general fund each year because $38 million would not take care of one either police or fire.

So we definitely would have to move money on an ongoing basis.

So here are the projections of what the public safety fund would look like based on current sales tax projections.

So in this scenario, we would anticipate funding the fund with $60 million from the general fund in fiscal years 27 and 28, and then $55 million for the next seven years.

This is all just a scenario basis.

This is not anything definite, but this is just what this scenario looks like.

So if you look at the capital improvement expense line, we will pay for all of the large capital expenses from the fund balance of this public safety uh fund beginning in fiscal year 28 with the police precinct, and then followed by two fire station renovations in fiscal year 29.

Uh this scenario also accounts for 54 new firefighters, and that's 52 to get us to the four-person crews and 12 for a new fire station.

And that's as well as uh 50 new police officers.

It also considers an additional pension contribution to move us closer to a fully funded pension in a shorter amount of time, as well as a move to loggers for new police and firefighters and yearly increases for employees.

So this is what the general fund would look like if the previous scenarios were put into place.

Uh these projections are based on status quo in the general fund with the 2 percent year-over-year increase in salaries.

You could see it.

Go ahead.

I was just gonna say it would start to provide some relief.

You can see the yellow total revenue line is outpacing the expenses, so you would start to get some relief to the general fund pretty much right away.

And this is what the public safety fund would look like.

Uh there is a little anomaly in 28.

We corrected that, but we didn't want to mess with the slides.

Thank you.

We put this in just to kind of show you what another scenario would look like.

So this would be a three quarter cent tax.

Uh and if you notice the transfer end is at 60 million for every year.

Uh but with that current with that same scenario at the three quarter cent, if you look at the rolling balance, we would be uh perpetually negative, basically after the first year.

We also looked, we also looked at debt service doing debt instead of paying outright, and it's still the scenario is just as bad.

This is just basically kind of showing what something under the one percent would look like.

So here are sales tax receipts by location.

Uh right now at the at the high point, uh, we receive about 68 percent of our sales tax dollars uh from local residents.

And that's at the high point.

We have seen lower dates uh throughout the year where it gets as low as around 54 percent or so.

This is what the one cent sales impact would be on several common items.

So for a $4 cup of coffee, uh you would look at about four cents per cup additional.

For a $12 meal, you would be looking at around $12 cents additional.

And for a hundred dollar retail purchase, you will be looking at around a dollar.

So the what the one cent sales tax would look like to on household and household impact.

Um we we did a lower income, middle income, and upper.

And so for a lower income family, it would be around 51 percent of taxable goods.

It is basically the percent that that is spent on taxable goods of income, and it would be an increase, an annual increase of eighty-one dollars and forty cents.

We also did that over a three-year period or seven-year period.

So we did one, three, and seven years.

Uh and by the seventh year, that eighty-one dollars and forty cents would be ninety-one dollars and sixty-seven cents.

Uh this is based on two percent CPI escalator.

And then it kind of follows through.

That is basically our presentation for tonight, and we'd be welcome to any questions.

All right.

So uh now time for council questions for staff.

I know we have a lot.

This is a lot of information.

Appreciate the additional information that was provided at the last meeting, but we're on the slides that are now on the slides, so do appreciate the additional conversations for that.

So questions from council of staff before we open up for public comment.

Yeah, Vera.

I believe you have these figures on this, both of these figures on the slides just separately.

Um can you share what is the difference between how much we allocated to public safety, how much we previously allocated to public safety versus the $60 million we would advocate next year if this passes.

So basically, how much would it free up for the general fund?

Uh around six million dollars is what it would free up in the first year.

Thank you.

Other council questions of staff?

Yeah, Betsy and then Christina.

Does that mean?

Um the the first year you left it at $60 million from the general fund.

So you think that we would have a $6 million increase that we would use for something else?

And then the next year we would have $11 million freed up in the general fund while maintaining that $55.

So let's get it.

Million dollars today.

Okay.

So uh so in fiscal year 27, we would project that we would move $60 over.

It's around $66 million for police and fire.

It's what we're doing right now.

So in the first year, we would be able to move six million to something else.

Well, you would just have six additional million in the general fund.

It wouldn't necessarily be moved to anyone.

Well, but that would allow you then to fund public health or something else.

Okay.

Thanks.

Yeah, I think this one maybe goes to uh Chief Schaefer or Chief uh Shaluti.

Um I think earlier I had uh message you guys uh some questions about what that looks like in terms of like um preventative versus kind of response care in terms of your priorities on.

Do you want to kind of speak a little bit to that uh based on some of those questions I asked?

Or do you want me to ask the specific questions?

You notice he's giving Jill the warm seat now.

We see this.

Well done.

Yeah.

We did uh we did answer those, I think, pretty comprehensively on the council questions, but uh, I can just provide again from the the fire perspective is that every FTE that we bring on board contributes to uh education, enforcement, emergency response, and um and uh economic incentives.

So they are part of the prevention effort in the department because now it's woven in everything we do with community risk reduction.

We're not a response organization anymore.

We're a forward-leaning prevention community risk uh organization now.

So they all are focused, and that's in we redid our mission statement.

It's in everything that we do now.

So hopefully I think in a in a traditional fashion, we'd be asking for more enforcement people and more community uh education people, but we're trying to have our community fire stations do a lot of that work.

Everybody's got that responsibility now, if that if that helps explain our perspective.

Yeah, I just think the public would like to kind of know the response that you guys gave.

You gave a really detailed one about each of those letters and how that's so from the police perspective, um, one of the challenges that we face, I'm gonna quote a little bit from what I sent earlier, which is response and prevention are often very interconnected.

So it's difficult to pull those things apart and say this was clearly response and this was prevention, and that's how we can figure out which one worked and which one didn't.

Some government service services can easily be divided into distinct functions, but many police activities simultaneously accomplish both.

For example, if we respond to a violent offender and make an arrest, that's clearly a response to a crime that has already occurred.

However, it's also prevention because removing that offender from the community may prevent additional crimes, retaliatory violence, or future victimization.

Similarly, proactive police patrols in uh high crime areas are intended to deter criminal behavior before it occurs, but those same officers must also immediately respond to emergency 911 calls.

So a lot of the investments that are associated with this proposal serve both purposes at the same time.

Increasing staffing levels improves emergency response capacity, but it also allows officers more time for proactive policing, problem solving, relationship building, traffic enforcement, downtown patrols, and community engagement efforts that are intended to reduce crime before it occurs.

Prevention and policing is also inherently difficult to measure because success is often measured in events that never happened.

It is much easier to quantify calls responded to, arrests made, or reports taken than to measure crimes deterred, conflicts prevented, or situations de-escalated before they became violent.

In many cases, the absence of crime is the outcome we are striving for, but that absence is not always easily visible in statistical form.

Ultimately the goal is not to choose between prevention and response.

Effective public safety requires both.

The ability to respond quickly and professionally to emergencies, investigate crimes thoroughly, maintain visible officer presence, engage proactively and meaningfully with the community, and address quality of life concerns, all work together to reduce crime and improve public safety outcomes over time.

You have more, Christina.

Yeah, I think it was just uh kind of going along with that.

You guys also took the time to kind of re uh explain how uh Chief uh Shaver, I think you mentioned dark horse uh emergency.

Do you want to kind of speak to how that helps for that more preventative and um future evaluation, risk evaluation?

Sure.

So uh two years ago or close to two years ago, we purchased a software platform that integrates data from a number of disparate sources and uh creates a predictive tool for the fire department of where to put resources and create what-if scenarios.

So before we ever a year ago, when we first started talking about this one percent tax measure, we were able to run a number of different scenarios uh in in all of your wards on what if this arterial roadway would connect this road to this world.

What if we added a person here and moved a company to another neighborhood?

We were able to develop number of different scenarios, and that led to the recommendations for the stations into the future, but to be able to do that would require having the funding and the public support for the funding.

So I think what we've been trying to do is model the outcomes that we've heard from the public that they expect, and uh and then put that into practice as soon as we have the funding.

Thank you.

Oh Jill, do you want to see that?

I was just gonna say uh my talking about measurements, there's some things that I think we could reasonably expect.

Um, you know, the the investments we're looking to make here are also intended to create conditions that reduce the likelihood of crime and violence and disorder over time.

Um I would expect we would be looking at things like uh reductions in repeat violent offenders, reductions in shots fired, reduction in repeat calls for service to chronic problem locations, property crimes, response times are obviously very important for us as well, and then how much time officers have available to do proactive work.

So that also bleeds into case clearance rates, increased visible patrol presence, and then just a greater overall capacity for problem oriented policing, community policing efforts.

Any other questions for I just have a quick one.

Can you go to slide um 25, I think it was?

Isn't it nice they're all numbered?

Yeah, I appreciate you very, very, very, very, very much.

Um I think and this is um actually Jill, you might want to stay there.

Um because in in I mean, you I I think probably you can speak to this or Matthew or Jim can get up.

So one of the things that we hear a lot is about the So my question is, you know, what happened between fiscal year 23 and 24 for the increase in the employee wages?

And then I I know the answer to that.

But then my question is actually for Jill.

So I don't know if Matt, if you want to respond to what happened in between 23 and 24.

That is when we had the the class and compensation study.

Okay.

Basically there was a $20 million investment that was made into our workforce.

And I think because my question is because that's like the foundation of where we are, right?

These like we're we're seeing our needs because we needed to invest in our employees in order to go forward.

So I guess my question is more for like Jill.

As we're sorry, Chief Schlute.

Uh as we're talking about this question of adding additional staff, I have kind of two questions.

One, what were vacancies like before that for the police, and where are we today?

And then my second one is what does an increase in staffing levels do?

You mentioned, I think at our May 4th meeting, the work life balance.

So what is it that could change that would make that better?

What is it that we're proposing?

So I think we made really great steps at that time because we were clearly in the lower end of starting salary for police officers for s especially for cities our size, there were cities bigger than smaller than us that were paying more.

So when I was sworn in in December of 23, we were almost at 40 vacancies, and that's not counting our professional staff.

So 40 officer vacancies.

I think a huge part of climbing out of that hole was implementing the recommendations from the class and comp study, um, making those investments to increase starting pay as well as increase current officer pay and trying to deal with pay issues that had kind of been prevalent over many, many years.

And so now we find ourselves in a situation where we're going we're uh despite and I please don't think I'm not appreciative of the work we did, but because every other city is doing the same thing, we're already falling backwards again.

Um Matthew pulled some numbers that we're looking at, and so we're sliding back towards back down underneath several other cities.

And so unfortunately the labor market, especially for police officers, just so competitive that if we're not in that top five, it's going to be really tough to continue to recruit.

The double-edged sword there is we also have to look at a continued, and and you guys have heard me talk about before funding the step plan that's laid out is very important.

We have to retain the folks that we have.

And so them seeing that predictability is really important to keeping them long term.

Because it's one thing to get you in the door with the starting pay, but it's really hard to keep you if you say, because a lot of a lot a lot of agencies have kind of piggybacked on to our lateral pay ideas, and so now they're offering lateral pay, so they will attract our folks away from us.

So it's really going to have to be something if we don't keep up, if we slide back, I'm afraid we could fall right back into having 30, 40 and and in policing anymore.

We're all always one major incident nationwide away from recruitment just tanking on top of it.

So what would an increase in staffing do for you know the increasing in the staffing levels?

Like what will that do when you mention work life balance?

What is that?

Yeah, so I've worked eight-hour shifts, 10-hour shifts, and 12-hour shifts at the department.

Um I have not been uh I don't have my kids of my own, and by the time I had step kids in my life, I did not have to do that kind of shift work.

Um but it was difficult enough as a single person.

So we have officers that are on 12-hour shifts that turn into 14-hour shifts, and then they have to come back and work the next day, or they get told they have to work overtime for a special event.

And so we're really trying to get the first order of businesses to get our patrol, which is the backbone staffed up to the point where we can get them off these 12-hour shifts.

The sweet spot for us is seemed to have been 10-hour shifts.

It allows us overlap, so people get off work on time, which they really love.

And also we had an all-squad training day.

So we were able to have one day a week where every single person worked, and then everybody trained, took turns training throughout that training cycle.

So a portion of the staff would just do everyday police work, answering 9-1-1 calls and doing that type of work, a portion of the staff would do training, and then we had enough people, we'd say, okay, today we're going to do a special enforcement activity, we're going to go to uh do speed enforcement school zones or some something that had been an issue that had been brought to us.

And so allowing people to have that kind of balance, and then also once patrols staffed, we can start staffing all the other things.

And most when we interview a lot of people, they don't come in and say, I think I want to be a patrol officer on the beat for 25 years.

They all have career aspirations and dreams of a lot of different things, but we can't grow the other units we need to grow if we don't have patrol staff first.

And so I think the other really I think dangerous pieces if we can't keep up with the pay issues and we start losing people, the effect on the workforce that stays, I can't adequately describe to you how difficult that is on them.

Because we can't just go, sorry, guys, don't have any cops today.

I mean, that's just not an option.

So we're asking those people that stay to do more and more and more and more and more, and that is not good for their their well-being mentally or physically, and certainly not for their families.

Thank you for that.

Any other questions?

Yeah.

Vera and then Valerie.

Uh, when you talk about that increased staffing and the the effect that it can have on the employees, you may not know this number offhand, but do you have an idea of how many officers or how many employees we have lost this year to other departments?

So not retirees, but because they've they've gone to somewhere else.

To other departments in 26, I think I only one is immediately coming to mind.

So statistically, we've had more people retire or I would say retirement, leave policing altogether, and then leave for other departments.

But because we made those investments, we've been pretty competitive, but now we're kind of falling backwards, so I get very nervous.

Fire similar uh Kansas City, at least summit in St.

Louis County are where we usually lose our folks uh right after they graduate the Academy about a year in the opportunities or the pay is better in those those areas, so we lose people there.

Yeah, you know, I had a bunch of questions.

Um finance, but since Jill is still here, I'll ask my one Jill question first.

Um staffing is a huge part of this, um, and it's a huge part in my consideration.

I know also when we look at the public survey, um, the short answers and even in the media, um I think there's a big difference between um perception of crime and actual crime.

I think there's also a big difference between perception of where our staff is or should be and where the calls are.

Um and I wondered if you can I guess kind of give us idea of what the like actual typical calls that you have people responding to, what the nature of those are most frequent types of calls.

So we do in our benchmark cities data that we provide every year, um, we actually actually I brought that folder with me.

And while you're looking at that, I guess part two of that question is how does that how does that balance help you inform where staffing goes and what choices are made?

So to probably so we we track what types of calls we get the most, and a lot of those aren't super surprising, 911 checks, things of that nature.

But really the the issue becomes because there's so few people working at one time, the higher level calls, and and really there's not it's far more likely that a call is going to require two officers than one at this point in policing.

And so automatically when people are going to to a call, and then you have things like recs on I-70, or there's a fire alarm at the school that we have to investigate or other high priority things, and it pulls, you know, if there's only 14 officers working at one time, you can easily get a third of the shift pulled into another part of the city.

And so that then starts this kind of ripple effect of everybody's out of position.

I'm supposed to be, you know, in the beat that has the mall and beat 10, and I had to go someplace else, and then the officer that was supposed to be in that beat is on another call, so I have to go cover his beat.

And so it just kind of that's what the way it goes almost all day long a lot of times is they just don't get to go back to their home area that we would like for them to stay in because they're just trying to go and triage everything.

Um ideally, so we have I uh you guys got some uh maps, I think in one of the other presentations, but ideally if a sector so the cities divided into quadrants, each quadrant has two beats.

Ideally, you would at least stay in your sector for your entire shift.

That's kind of the the core of community policing is staying in your area and getting to know the folks and businesses in that area.

So that's kind of the overall goal of that.

I hope that kind of helped answer your question.

Thank you.

If not, feel free to feel like Oh, I have my microphone muted.

It took it to a place that I also appreciate.

Yeah.

Did you think I will my other questions are for finance?

Okay.

I'm also interested in the 60 million transfer.

Um how we are planning.

Um I'm looking at slide 44 and 45.

Um we've planned for in addition to the sales tax, should it pass?

Um we'll have the same 60 million transfer in 27 and 28, and then going out, you've stepped it down to 55 million.

Um how are we projecting that?

And how are we projecting um what our actual expenses will be?

So for example, like I know we have priorities lined out in this.

Um of them are long term.

Will we be paying employee costs forever, and those will increase over time.

Um some of them are shorter term, um, like building expenses, like even um the police pension, once we share up our gap for financing that the expense to us is smaller because it maintains itself.

Um how do we plan for those fluctuations?

Um, or are we just starting with the base from last year?

Where did that five million step down come from?

So everything you just uh spoke about is present in this current scenario, so sort of like uh uh it explained it it gets us to the 42-person crew uh the and 12 new 12 additional firefighters for additional fire station, you have your three fire station renovations built in, two new fire stations, uh your police precinct.

Um there is a technology plan built in as well, as well as a vehicle equipment replacement plan uh and a building fund.

So we also uh increased annual salaries by two and a half percent every year going out.

So that's great.

I'm glad we've planned for that.

Yeah.

W where does the five million step down come from?

Is that just based off of the starting of last year or so we just kind of keep that fund?

So if you look at the rolling balance, we just look at the rolling balance and we're trying to keep that not to, you know, keep it in a good area, so we don't want it to get too high or too low.

So 55 at this scenario was enough to keep it in a good spot to take care of capital improvement needs as well as increased personnel and uh wage increases as well.

The rolling balance in the dedicated fund.

Yeah, I see it.

Green and slide 44.

Thanks.

Yeah.

Why would we want to keep a balance in the dedicated fund?

Most of these funds have some sort of uh fund balance or a reserve balance.

Reserve balance.

And so we wouldn't necessarily need to, but that will be something that the the council would have to decide on.

That's something that the council could decide.

And keeping a reserve balance allows you to maybe fund future capital improvement needs uh as you need them instead of having to go out for debt with that or taking more money from the general fund to do that.

What's the difference between a reserved balance and a surplus?

And do we have both?

Well, a surplus is just any time you have revenues over expenses, your reserve balance is the accumulation of those surpluses over a period of time.

Okay.

Valerie, while we're on this slide, before you move on, Chris Christina has a question about this slide.

But if you have more on this slide.

I have more on slide 45.

So if Christine on this slide wants to go on to 44.

Move your microphone a little bit towards you.

Oh yeah, I think this will be a quick one.

Um part of the uh expenditures we want to do with the public safety tax includes building uh new fire stations and renovating building the police uh station.

Is that what we're seeing under the capital improvements?

Or is that a coming from the capital improvements CIP funds?

It's a capital improvements line, like the 30 million dollars.

Okay, it's just a line.

It's not in addition or polling from that.

No.

Okay.

Thanks.

All right.

So it looks like now we'll go to slide 45, and then I think Valerie had questions about slide 45.

Yeah.

Um so much of this is decided year to year.

Um what I want to understand is how this can affect our decisions on funding outside of the police funding, where we've made a really direct um plan for how to spend the money if we had it.

Um if this alleviates pressure on the general fund, um looking at the other blocks, um, because on slide the other slides, um we don't have it separated out by type of spending.

We have it separated out by expense.

Um the health environment or transportation, are those expected to stay the same?

Or do we have the ability to increase our spending in areas that have had more recent pressure?

Yes, you would be able to expand spending in general fund areas.

So uh health.

Public works, things of that nature.

Yes.

Yeah, public health in particular, I think of.

Um is that reflected in our planning for spending?

Not at this time.

That is something that we would have to discuss with the with the council because that's not something that we basically had looked at.

We looked at the public safety side, but I mean, at some time at some point we would need to look at that.

What this does do is give give you room for the current plan, the way the status quo of of how the general fund is operating at this time.

Okay.

Um the next question I had was if if I'm still good to keep asking.

Um can you walk us through some of the choices that were made to decrease expenditures with this last budget?

Um now I'm asking you things we already know and have been over as a council, but um for the benefit of the public.

Can you remind us how what choices were made with this?

So basically in the general fund, uh we cut many expenditures.

I can't say exactly what we cut because I'm I'm not I can't remember at this time.

But we did cut a lot of expenditures from year uh fiscal year 25 to fiscal year 26 uh for those budgets in order to to try to head off these issues that we saw coming.

And that's another thing that we're gonna have to do for the 27 budget as well.

Uh there there are going to be some real decisions that have to be made uh before that's even before we get it to you all.

And I'm I'm expecting we'll have more hard decisions to make uh when it gets to you all as well, because the the position that we're in, our expenses are growing much more rapidly than our uh revenues.

And so we we have been forced to dial back on most spending, and so we're basically cutting cutting into the bone of this part.

Karen, do you want to add to that?

Yeah, I can't do that.

Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

So when we when we looked at last year's budget, the first thing we did was reach out to department directors and say, hey, we need you to look at your budgets and make a want to say it was a two percent cut.

Uh it looked at reduction of staff, not necessarily reduction of staff, reduction of vacant positions to say that we won't fill positions.

The only departments that we actually need to fill in positions for was the police department.

And so there was a lot of requests that were made, but we could not fund those requests.

We looked at our vehicle purchases and said that we wouldn't be able to purchase those vehicles out of this fund.

Out of our general fund.

And so we made the hard look at and seeing exactly what reduction we can make on those requests for the budget.

The goal was to keep it at a very neutral position.

But Matt's alluding to right now.

We're in our budget process, and we have already asked departments to give us what their recommendations are.

And from that, we'll look at what our ability is to fill those recommendations.

Um the outlook isn't isn't that strong.

And so we're going to have some of those same hard conversations with department directors.

The one thing I'm proud of with our department directors is that we actually sit around in a room and we talk about what can we give on to make sure that we can have a balanced budget.

The hard thing that we look at in Colombia, and I think the one thing that kind of is startling is when you look at our traveling training.

Our training budget is about one percent of our overall budget.

And so training is extremely important, but because of our funding abilities, we're not able to fund that in a sufficient manner.

And when you say looking at their training budget, we have two academies within that general fund, we're still at one percent.

And so those are the things we look at.

The goal is to make sure that we have a balanced budget.

Uh last year we we just when we we had that hard thought about we can give raises for our employees.

The council said no, our employees are our highest priority, let's make sure we give raises.

But that was that that was a hard decision that had to be made looking at what our allocations were.

Yeah, I remember those tough choices.

Um the tough choices for 27 that you mentioned, Matthew, even if this one percent passes.

With the one percent, it will give us give us room.

Uh but currently as it stands, yes, we are.

Yeah.

Um that leads in what is our largest expense type?

People.

And what departments have the most vacancies and the most need for staff.

That's a great question.

You gave me a table.

And I think it was police and fire.

Um although I think utilities also has a need for staffing and is a very large department.

Um as we face hard decisions, and as we face needs for staff, I find choices that affect our employees the hardest to cut back on.

All right.

Any other questions for staff before we open up for public comment?

All right.

Would anyone from the public wish to speak on Bill 11926 as amended?

Hello again, Danny Perez.

Um I can't help but notice a pattern.

That pattern is lumping everything.

Um public safety is a very broad term.

This is not a public safety tax.

This is a police and fire department tax, and I think that needs to be more clear.

We're also treating public safety like a monolith.

We're treating its remedy like a monolith.

Like it's 2026.

Why is the fire department still lumped with the police department in order to get funding?

I think the fire department does deserve and need updates and upgrades.

But why do they have to be affiliated with the police to have a public safe tax funding?

I also think that the police are too much of a monolith of a remedy for public safety.

I think their plate in our cup is runeth overth.

I think that maybe we need to start thinking about lifting their load and their burdens by maybe redistributing certain aspects of their departments into new systems and programs.

Tracy last meeting talked about looking at things as systems.

If we're going to talk about public safety, maybe we need to not make the police such a cornerstone of this conversation and actually help the employees have better education, because you talked about education as 1%.

Okay.

Will this tax have conditions saying we want their training to center around critical race theory?

But just as importantly, know how to handle themselves when they're out of that situation.

Like there's so many things that's so broad.

I also notice in the information that said that 50% of the population or 50% of the people that they surveyed were for this tax.

Again, were they for the police or are they for the fire department?

We don't know.

Also, um it was all lumped together.

So how many of those voices were black voices?

I know that sounds like a nitpick, but if the when the police have birthed from um violence against black people, amongst other demographic um demographics, um, that is an important thing to know.

We just lumped that information together.

If we really want to have a broad spectrum of people's voices, we need to understand these these things.

I think one of the things we need to understand is that the police are made up of human beings, regardless of how we feel about it, and their load is very heavy.

So the best thing maybe we can do to improve their performance is to lighten their load and redistribute policing into different programs for public safety.

Treat it like an ecosystem, not a monolith culture.

Thank you.

Would anyone else from the public wish to speak?

Eugene Elkin Ward 2.

Tonight I've come in from the homeless shelter.

I really think you need to be thinking seriously who will be affected by any increase in this city.

We have seniors, we have low income, we have the homeless.

Hey, I just got a house.

I just got they lose it because they can't afford the cost of living in Columbia.

We learned tonight that there are 58 percent of Colombians that actually live here voting on the matter.

The point is every time a decision is made, we need to look at 60 percent of the population as opposed to those who are only here nine months a year.

The revenue comes in off those who decide to live here and stay here.

The Tribune tonight, one in four, that is 2000, it was one in five.

Seniors are starting to hurt.

If we don't stop and pay attention to what I have stood up and many others recently, I said I got 29 Social Security increase, but $50 increase in rent.

That is not covering all the other increases.

We have the war, we need to remember.

The cost of living is so high right now, this would be the wrong time to vote for increases.

Yes, they presented very good details tonight.

I'm proud of all the things they're saying.

But I don't see recovering the City of Columbia's budgeting until they really get in there and cut, cut, and cut.

They're if you look at the matter, do you have enough funds for the goals that were presented tonight?

No.

They said there will be money left over.

Where was that gonna go?

You're thinking, oh, we'll have more money to spend on such and such.

No.

The city is hurting on the total amount of money.

If you pass this, you're only enabling the future of Columbia to avoid collapse.

What about the general public?

How many more people are gonna be walking the homeless line?

Thank you.

Um Tracy Wilson, Cleek Camp Race Matters Friends.

So I'm in a con quandary about this.

One, I feel that um police and fire over the years have been neglected in terms of their infrastructure needs.

And so has the public, quite frankly.

Um I wouldn't put their needs above ours.

I know a lot of people are concerned about public safety, but I think there's some serious structural problems with our thinking and planning and lack of processes that keeps us in this place where we show up empty-handed.

Um I'll give an example tonight.

We're talking about the solid waste and sewer, but we don't have the 2021 study with us to make comparisons to make sense of how do we get here, right?

So here we are talking about um police and fire, they're police stationed as crap.

They didn't finish the one on the north side, and they need several million, and we're the pension nuns are funded, and we're gonna pass a sales tax.

We want to pass a sale tax, and which we pass on our losses on to poor people.

That is some really twisted stuff.

Really twisted.

And it's right there in your charts.

It says, Oh, yeah, we're gonna pass on this losses.

People are paying 51% of their income on you know taxable goods.

Oh, joy, it's not gonna hurt people that are rich.

Really?

But you all have said that you're into equity.

So if you're into equity, where's the alternative?

Where's your plan that doesn't burn people who you've burned for years who are poor?

Where's that plan?

So I'm not saying that this is you know, saying no to it is because I'm against the police and flyer, because I'm not.

I think they've been done just as bad as they've done poor people in this town.

Well, they don't have a house.

They don't have the infrastructure, and they're doing the best they can, but at least they get a paycheck.

Right?

And they're working very hard to keep their people working for them.

I think that's great.

But we all, and I don't like this all stuff, we all deserve the same kind of respect.

So at the end of the day, I think the question is are we practicing equity or are we practicing or are we performing that we care?

Are we performing that we're doing equity?

And if we admit that that we're performing equity, then we have to come back and restructure the way that we do things.

And this isn't a restructure.

This is just putting, as I said, a fly on the ass of an elephant.

And I don't I don't think that's band-aid's gonna work.

So we need more than a band-aid.

Do with it what you will.

I wouldn't vote for it, not because I'm voting against the police, but because you've got to force this infrastructure, this structure of people to bring you something that's viable and equitable and sustainable, and this is not it.

Anyone else from the public who wish to speak?

Hello, uh, my name is Susan Mays.

I live in the first ward.

Um I wanted to discuss that this is a sales tax.

The city is reliant on sales tax, which means the city endorses aggressive regressive tax system.

Our electric bills just went up, our water bills just went up, and those were across the board increases.

They weren't staggered.

There was no, hey, you don't use as much electricity, so we're gonna cut you a penny and a kilowatt hour or whatever, and we're gonna charge the people that use thousands a lot more.

That used to be the way it was.

Not this council, but the one before it did away with that.

So why are we doing and now surprise, surprise?

We have 5,000 people living downtown now, most of whom are young and kind of crazy, like I was.

And we need more cops.

Huh?

Who could have thunk it?

So where's the plan?

Where's all this growth paying for itself?

It's not, you're charging me more.

And also that's 7.9%.

There aren't many places retail that you get 7.9%.

The Cronkies have a penny per sales tax, the district has their penny, the business loop has their penny.

There's very few places in town where I can spend less than 10 cents on a dollar for sales tax in this town.

So just wanted to point that out.

You know, you gotta do what you gotta do.

It is what it is, but you are screwing poor people when you're passing these kinds of laws, and I really wish the city would plan better.

So that's where I wanted to set make that statement.

And there was one other thing I wanted to mention, and I can't remember it right now, of course.

That teaches me for not writing it down.

But thank you very much.

Thank you.

Would anyone else from the public wish to speak on Bill 11926 as amended?

My name is Brenda Campbell.

I believe I'm in Vera's ward, which is two, and um I live in Valley View.

Um I came to speak on another issue tonight, however, I'm also interested in this one, and I just want to comment that on the financials that were that were shown.

Um I think it's very misleading when you say low income and you don't want you don't put that it's zero to fifteen thousand or zero to thirty thousand, and the middle income is what high income is what.

Um I think you all realize that not everyone is a professor at the University of Missouri or Stevens College or any of the other colleges.

There's a few of us people that actually worked under those people, and that we don't make the kind of money that they do.

So a one percent additional sales tax can really make a difference in your income that you receive.

I'm retired, my husband is retired.

Um, so our income does not increase.

Once in a while, my husband gets a 2%.

And so again, I think that's misleading because I don't know what low income is in Columbia, Missouri, you know, right now, or middle income.

I don't even know if I'm in the middle income or I'm in the low income.

Okay, I just know that my expenses are this amount each month, and one percent, especially for low-income people, I'm assuming, which is you know, within that range that I mentioned, can make a real difference because that's a one percent tax on everything that you buy, except I assume your pharmaceuticals or your drug income expenses.

And um I know that it's just my husband and me, but I think about those younger people that have two or three kids at home.

I know that our grocery bill, what I used to spend has risen by 10 or 20 dollars a week.

So that's the grocery amount that you're spending, and of course the gas has gone up during this time.

So there's all of these different factors at this timing, and again, like everyone's mentioned, we're not against improving the fire and the and the police department, but it seems to me that accumulating this one percent sales tax, and for example, the police department has not even been able to recruit to fill their positions.

This money's just gonna be sitting out here somewhere waiting for them to supposedly fill those positions, and again, I know they've improved the salary, but um again, it seems to me it's just a round circle somewhere you've got to figure out to break it so that things can improve, and people want those jobs, and we need to do better crime prevention.

Um, as everyone knows, they now have their chime in their ring.

People are taking public safety on themselves because of the you know deficiency in the police.

Thank you, Brenda.

You're at time.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Anyone else from the public wish to speak on bill 11926 as amended?

Seeing none, we'll come back to um council commons uh and questions before we Christina.

Um this is definitely um an interesting uh first uh major vote that I feel I have to do.

Um so I kind of wrote down some thoughts before I came in here, and so I just want to share those.

I do um remember when I was campaigning, I was door knocking and talking to people about whether they felt safe or they were happy in Columbia.

A majority of people did feel safe and happy in Colombia.

And there were people that encouraged me to um, you know, they wanted to know where I stood on this specific issue because the city has been working for a while to come up with their approach and how they were gonna present this information.

So here are uh the thoughts that I wrote.

Uh as we continue shaping our city's approach to public safety, I hope that we remain mindful that long-term safety is not built through response systems alone.

Public safety is also influenced by whether people have access to stability, opportunity support, and pathways forward throughout their lives.

I'm talking about upward mobility.

Multiple studies have shown that returns of approximately seven to twelve dollars for every one dollar invested in early prevention and childhood development programs pays back.

When we discuss future investments in public safety, I believe it is important that our planning process includes considerations of the broader factors that influence crime and community well-being over time.

Research consistently shows connections between long-term outcomes and access to supportive environments during childhood and adolescence, educational opportunities, economic mobility, and community stability.

I'd encourage the city to ensure that any long-range public safety frameworks includes discussion around these preventions, resiliency, and upward mobility alongside traditional response.

This does not mean replacing emergency response or law enforcement responsibilities.

It simply means recognizing that a comprehensive public safety strategy should also examine these conditions that reduce the likelihood of crisis, victimization, and future involvement with the justice system.

I know this firsthand.

I've seen it.

I also see cities as our city grows, I believe we could continue asking not only how we respond to emergencies, but also how we create an environment where fewer residents reach crisis in the first place.

Long-term public safety planning should include thoughtful evaluations of those systems, the partnerships, and the community conditions that continue to build healthier outcomes for every child, family, and neighbor.

Simply stated, as we invest in our public safety, our city must place equal focus on prevention, long-term stability, and creating conditions that help reduce crisis before it occurs.

I know that was a long one.

Thank you.

Okay.

Yeah.

I keep encouraging the community to think of fire and police as infrastructure.

As we grow our infrastructure to serve our population needs to grow.

The problems we're facing is that it did not.

I don't like that this is a sales tax.

I would rather it be anything else.

We did have a property tax proposed in previous ballot measures that didn't pass.

That's part of how we got here as well.

It's a tax that we will dedicate by creating a dedicated fund.

It's a tax that goes that is a general fund tax and creates a dedicated fund.

I'm concerned about our ability to spend on anything else.

I would rather have a dedicated tax to fund public health and have extra money available that we can now spend on police.

But all of our staffing, all of our spending is connected, and I need something that relieves that pressure.

And because federal spending, federal money coming to us to cover positions that we need is less certain.

And we're increasingly reliant on compensating for those positions from our general fund.

Those are also non-optional items.

For me, we need some structure.

We need to make some hard choices.

I don't think it's our staff.

And I don't think that we can serve our population and cut staff.

I also think that staffing for public safety, both police and fire, and yes, public health.

This is essential for our operations.

And we have essential needs that our neighborhoods that are communities need to have officers present for.

And there are things that we're not able to do because of our staffing shortages.

I would like to see us get to community policing.

We can't do it with our current staff.

Can't do it with our current staff.

Those are real things.

And I respect that.

And so I don't want to belabor the point.

But I do want to say that that is how I continue to view this.

Thank you.

So the last meeting I had verbalized my concern about the other potential initiatives that would be on the ballot in August.

And while I still have those concerns, I want to also state publicly that I believe our fire and police chief when they tell us what they need.

They're in these positions for a reason.

They are the experts.

I'm not the expert on public safety.

And I appreciate also the time and hours that they've spent into it or spent on this.

And I think it's very important for this to go to the voters, number one, for them to ultimately decide.

And now I forgot my number two.

Or to go to this late getting late.

It goes to the voters in that.

Oh, this is what it was.

That by putting this on the ballot, it is a way council can express our formal support of our public servants.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Betsy, did you have anything?

Well, I don't think I have that much actually to add.

I I do want to thank the finance department, the police department, the fire department, the city manager's office, everybody who's spent the last year, a year and a half really looking at this.

You know, this isn't something that's just come up.

Oh, let's just put this tax on the ballot and see if it passes.

This has been a lot of hard work of really looking at what we need to improve safety in Columbia, you know, to make our properties safe for those who have properties, to make sure our fire department can show up, our police department.

And it hasn't been something that's been cavalierly looked at.

This has been a lot of hard work for a lot of people.

So I agree.

It needs to go to the citizens.

I hope the citizens will agree, as painful as it is, that we need this tax and we need it dedicated to public safety, and which is police and fire at the moment.

And yes, perhaps in the future it frees up more general fund um money for help with other areas, whether it's homelessness or low income or whatever.

But this needs to be directed specifically for fire and police.

And I'm gonna also vote for it to put it on the August ballot and just let the citizens make a decision.

Yeah, and I I don't want to repeat everybody, but I mean I I also wanted to thank the staff for bringing forward.

Um also just like the really thoughtful timeline dedicated when this could potentially happen, appreciate that.

Uh also for making the ask.

A lot of people have mentioned how previous councils had in our previous administrations had not.

And so it is it is a it is a brave ass to make this game because you know the impacts it has on families, and you don't make it lightly.

And so I appreciate the thoughtfulness that went into it.

And then kind of like I think most of the other council members said, for me, the reason for this is really about the people, the people who are our first responders, responding to them, providing that work-life balance, helping making sure we have enough people who can respond to the needs of our community.

And so, yeah, I'm looking forward to to seeing this go on the ballot and to Jackie's point.

Right now, we can't really control anything that's happening outside.

We can't even control a lot that's happening inside.

Um, but what's happening at the state level?

And to me, this is really about we can't control the predictability of what's happening at the state or what's happening in the county, um, but having local voter-approved funding for local priorities is the only thing that we can count on.

And so I'm I'm proud to support this.

Um, Sheila, will you please call roll on bill um 11926 as amended?

Council Bill 11926A, Ms.

Carroll.

Yes.

Ms.

Elwood?

Yes.

Ms.

Sample.

Yes.

Ms.

Hartman.

Ms.

P.

Yes.

Yes.

Uh Ms.

Buffalo.

Yes.

All right.

Thank you.

Moving on.

Sheila, we please read um Bill 12126.

Council Bill 12126 is an ordinance establishing an administrative delay on the acceptance or processing of applications relating to the establishment or expansion of a data center for data center facility, providing an exception for acceptance and processing of an application under circumstance certain circumstances, and fixing the time when this ordinance shall become effective second reading.

Do we have a staff report?

Uh yes, a brief one.

Uh no presentation for this.

Uh but we did want to put it out on old business in case there was questions or conversation around it.

Uh, if you call April 6th meeting, staff had presented a ordinance to revise unified development code to uh separate out data centers as a is a separately uh defined use and make it a conditional use during that conversation.

There was some uh additional concerns expressed by council.

Uh and they asked staff to put together an ordinance that would do uh that would put in place an administrative delay on any future applications for data centers.

Um at that time we did discuss a six-month delay after further consideration.

That's been revised up to a year, just to make sure we have adequate time, I think, to go through all the steps that we need to to bring something back to council uh that I think meets everyone's expectations.

We can always uh dial that back if we get there before the year, but this uh prevents having to extend it if we don't quite hit that six-month mark.

So happy to answer any questions.

So I appreciate um this coming back.

Any questions for staff on this?

I don't think so.

We requested this.

Um is anyone from the public wish to see does anyone, sorry, does anyone from the public wish to speak on Bill 12126?

Eugene Alcam second ward.

If you've been watching television at all, you can imagine how many times this subject's coming up.

In the state of Idaho, they have just one center that will take more energy than the entire state now uses.

Wonder why it's in the news.

You really must look into the matter and serious side of it.

There is nothing to gain but a lot of loss.

You're talking about electricity, water, human lives, and who's behind all this.

Is it really gonna be fit our world or not?

Thank you.

Anyone else from the public wish to speak on bill 12126?

Hi, good evening, Tyler Travers, on behalf of Renew Missouri, a nonprofit uh up the road here in Columbia that works on renewable energy and energy efficiency.

Uh, we want to thank you for bringing this back so quickly, and we're in support of this temporary pause, hoping that planning and zoning can come back with conditional use uh requirements that would hopefully uh mandate renewable energy if it is used so that it protects our health and environment and as well as consumer protections, um, so say a data center were to come that they cover the cost themselves and those burdens aren't placed on our ratepayers.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Would anyone else from the public wish to speak on bill 12126?

Administrative delay for any sort of data center permit.

Um I'm personally in favor of this.

Um I don't know if you saw the news, I'm sure you did, but nobody wants data centers.

I think we need to take this a step further and not only create more in delays on this, but put in protections, use this time wisely to create protections because nobody in St.

Louis wants it, nobody in the Ozarks wants it.

We have unique wildlife here.

And if the billionaires want data centers, have them in their own backyards, not here in beautiful Missouri.

We do not want it.

I know I sound like a lolodiet, but people really don't want this, and there are so many reasons health reasons, um, climate reasons.

Um it's not profitable, so economic reasons.

So I do think we need to take advantage of this pause to make sure that we listen to the people and create um protection so that we do not have these centers.

Thank you.

Anyone else from the public wish to speak on bill 12126?

See none, I'll go to council comments.

Any counsel?

Yeah, Valerie.

Yeah, I'm just going to very briefly acknowledge that I have gotten a lot of constituent emails on this, as I'm sure all of my counterparts have as well.

Um I am in support of this.

Um this delay is a first step.

Um, and protections are to follow through planning and zoning.

They're working on those now.

Um, and I'm excited to see what they come up with.

The point of the delay is to hold processing any potential applications until we have a framework that puts the protections in place and then gives us a criteria to process them on.

Um so I think it's a smart way to do this.

We don't want to be hamstringed in our ability to understand um what the public wants and our ability to respond to applications.

Uh yeah, Bureau.

I just uh really briefly wanted to uh comment on and thank you for the willingness to reconsider the initial plan, which was a six-month delay and think through what that process would look like and request an extension to a year so that there can be full um public involvement in the process as well.

Um I think that shows exactly the kind of forethought into what it looked like that we were hoping for.

Any other council comments?

Yeah, I appreciate um the speed with which it came back to us and look forward to watching the conversation happening at planning and zoning.

Yeah.

We'll be able to have other things on the planning and zoning agenda ahead of those work sessions as well, right?

Well, I'm sure.

Just as plenty of asking from experience.

Yeah, and we uh you know planning zone to discuss that, and they do intend to have several uh work sessions over the next coming months, uh just specifically on data centers.

So anyone interested in data centers or has feedback, we we really encourage you to submit those comments in.

There'll be a be heard page set up at some point in the future too.

Um but uh we do intend to hopefully get all the comments and input that uh is needed to produce the uh correct ordinance for this.

Thank you.

Sheila, we please call a roll on bill one twenty-one twenty-six.

Council Bill 12126, Ms.

Carroll.

Yes, Ms.

Elwood?

Yes.

Ms.

Sample?

Yes, Ms.

Hartman?

Yes, Ms.

Peters?

Yes.

Ms.

Buffalo?

Yes.

All right.

Moving on to Bill 1226.

Sheila, will you please read?

Council Bill 1226 is an ordinance granting the issuance of a conditional use permit to the Cook family revocable living trust to allow the operation of a short-term rental on property located at 2208 Concordia Drive, providing a severability clause and fixing the time when this ordinance shall become effective second reading.

I think it is open at the bottom.

PowerPoint is open.

Thank you.

All right.

Uh yes, so this is a request uh for approval of a conditional use permit for a short short-term rental, excuse me.

Uh the property is located at 2208 um Concordia Drive.

Uh just to get everyone uh oriented here.

Uh stadium uh is along the east side of the aerial uh photo that you see here on your screen.

Uh this property is located just west of Bourne Avenue, south of Broadway, north of Rollins.

Um couple things I would note uh to begin with, this request did start as a request for 210 night short-term rental uh with eight guests during the process of uh the public hearing at planning and zoning, they did uh volunteer to reduce the night stay to 120 nights and the number of guests down to six guests.

Uh the six guests are uh the amount that would be accommodated by the parking on site.

Uh and so that was done, I think, in response to some of the concerns uh regarding the operational short-term rental there.

So it was a public hearing.

Uh another note that this is not a uh owner occupied one, so that it is required uh to receive the conditional use permit approval um by council.

Um just for fun, we reverse this.

So north is to the bottom of the screen, uh stadium is on the left side of the screen.

But just to give you a little idea, I think on the uh the street network here uh sites a corner lot, um, Bourne Avenue again on the left now, kind of a major north-south street through there.

Concordia uh comes in front of this property and kind of curves around back to the uh southwest.

It is an R1 zone property.

Again, as I mentioned, not the primary residence.

Um guests with the three available parking spaces on site, so they do have adequate parking for that number of guests.

Uh the site has not been previously offered as a short-term rental.

Uh and there's no um short-term rentals within that 300 feet that were not approved administratively.

That's that's the threshold for that 300-foot boundary.

Uh and uh number of the uh the properties around it do uh appear to be owner-occupied.

It's 11 of 19.

The agent lives within nine miles.

There are no violations related to the short-term rental for this property as of this time.

Um and there were three phone calls uh received by staff regarding this application for just general information.

Um staff does review um the technical requirements for um conditional use in this case for a short-term rental.

Uh did find it meets compliance for all those requirements.

Uh short-term regulations do provide for general oversight and means to address impacts in the future.

That is uh the potential revocation of a license uh given certain um circumstances are met.

Uh we do feel like it is consistent with the comprehensive plan, as has been uh the case, I think, uh during this time we've reviewed short-term rentals.

At the Planning and Zoning Commission, there were five speakers that spoke in opposition to the short-term rental.

Uh generally they were uh concerned with the safety of the area for having transient guests, uh, the traffic that might be generated and just the general neighborhood character.

Um there were actually two votes taken by planning zoning uh commission.

The first one I didn't note on here, but it was to amend that uh original application to the 129 and three or six guests.

Uh but the actual motion to approve the short-term rental did pass six to zero.

Um that would be the with the conditions there.

Uh as you can see on the screen for six guests and uh excuse me, that should be 120 nights uh for the recommendation.

So with that, I'd be happy to answer any questions.

Any questions from council of staff?

Yeah, Christina.

Uh one of the things that I kept hearing uh when it comes to STRs is there's a concern that there's not enough housing currently in Columbia.

Is there um besides the and I probably should have looked this up before I came in here, I apologize.

Um but besides the what is it 200, 300 foot 300 feet um between door to door.

Is there anything that says how many or a ratio of houses that can be within a given area or community?

No, there's nothing in the ordinance that specifically addresses concerns about the loss of a specific type of housing.

Uh the affordability is not something that's really addressed, I think, within the short-term rental ordinance or was contemplated when it was passed.

I think there's two provisions that get to some of those kind of uh not restrictions, but trying to address some of the concerns.

One's at the 300 feet one, and that's to to limit that kind of density in one particular area.

And there is a requirement that um you can only own one short-term rental in the city, and that's to kind of uh I think reduce the likelihood that someone from outside the city or a larger group would come in and buy up multiple homes and turn them into short-term rentals.

So that's another way to, I think, reduce, I think the overall impact to the community.

Okay.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

Yeah, Valerie.

I'm sorry, you lost me for a second there.

Did you just say affordability was not one of the things that was considered when the ordinance was passed?

It's not one of the specific criteria within the ordinance within the conditional use ordinances.

Specific affordability of housing.

But we have measures that were at least intended in our tiers to address affordability or address the risk of depletion to available housing.

Any other questions for staff on this?

I'll hold mine for the next one.

All right.

Does anyone from the public wish to speak on Bill 1226?

This is the short-term rental uh on Concordia.

Please state your name and your ward or address.

My name is David Bell, and I'm son of a resident owner on 2211 Concordia, which is right across the street from the other uh bed and breakfast that we're talking about.

Um location is very close.

Um location is separated by one street, and that one street is a thoroughfare for traffic coming off of Broadway into that subdivision.

A lot of traffic flows through that subdivision, right down Lock Lane in front of my mom's home.

And she's worried about traffic flow number one, noise level number two, the ability of the police to arrest people from the bed and breakfast at night, and um actually processing those people so that they don't do it again, um, which is a problem uh we've heard from in the previous planning and zoning committee meeting.

Um so we're worried about the habitual offenders that might be uh occupying this uh residence as a bed and breakfast.

It is zoned as an R1.

Um I'm worried about uh the planning and zoning committee being qualified to make a decision.

Um I don't know what kind of objectivity or training they get in making their decisions, but I'm I'm gonna question it here and you you know make sure this is on the record.

And I don't know if the council trains them, you know, trains them in making decisions for uh making decisions like that on an R1 area.

The area has very good elementary schools in it, Fairview, Russell Boulevard, um, and we have a lot of children playing in the area.

Uh so we're worried about the speed and the lack of ownership uh for the people that would be in that bed and breakfast.

Lack of ownership is a very high concern.

We're worried about um the decibel levels at night, which I mentioned and uh the police procedure in the protocol making sure it doesn't happen again.

It should happen once and that should be enough in a quiet neighborhood.

It is zoned R1, and I just worry about setting a precedent.

But uh this was not an issue then.

This was not brought up then.

So I'm saying it tonight.

We're worried about uh the driveway issue, the second driveway issue was taken care of with six um six people and three in a parking, one parking driveway.

I cannot see three vehicles in one driveway.

Mr.

Bell, you are at time.

On uh number 15.

You are at time.

Thank you.

If anyone else wants to make a comment or come up, they can finish your remarks or say uh additional ones.

Evening.

My name is Stan Campbell.

I'm a resident of Ward 2, but I'm coming up to speak to you on behalf of my mother-in-law, Barbara Bell.

She's 92 years old.

She's lived at 2211 Concordia for over 64 years.

She's living there by herself and doing quite well, and we're really proud of her.

But one of the things that she has raised her whole family to believe in is a sense of community, a sense of neighborhood, a sense of stability.

One of the things that we're concerned about within STR, especially one directly across the street, is strangers.

We're worried about traffic.

She likes to get out in the yard and work.

She likes to take a walk whenever possible.

We spoke to most of the residents that we could along Concordia Street and along Locked Lane.

And of those that we were able to speak with, only one of them did not say they were opposed to this.

She abstained.

So most of the people that we spoke with indicated that they would prefer not to have an STR in their neighborhood.

The council memo on this issue stated that there's no technical reason, and I quote, that an STR would be incompatible with the surrounding neighborhood.

Well, I would offer that we're not talking about technicalities.

We're talking about the quality of life, the character of that neighborhood, the community in which we all have grown up with and we're proud of.

Thank you for your time and your consideration.

Thank you.

Would anyone else from the public wish to speak on Bill 1226 proposed short-term rental for 2208 Concordio Drive?

Good evening.

I'm Kent Cook.

My uh wife and I, Lori, uh own the property at 2208.

So just to start off, I want to thank the council for considering our application.

Uh I wanted to just clarify what our purpose.

We've had it for uh since 2015.

It's predominantly been long-term and midterm rentals.

And our purpose was to use the short-term rental as a gap.

Uh you know, a new tool in our toolbox.

If we have a gap between two leases that we could utilize the short-term rental for that.

Um we do not want it to be an all short-term rental.

And that's why we agreed to lessen the um the nights per year, is because that's really not our sole purpose.

That's really all I have to say.

We've we've been uh very cognizant of the neighborhood.

I think we've been I don't think you'll hear that we've been bad uh landlords, we've had good tenants.

Um we want to continue that.

It is a great neighborhood.

You know, I just stayed in a uh Airbnb out in Phoenix, uh took a couple walks, a couple mornings.

Neighbors were friendly.

I would hope that this neighborhood is also friendly to people that they don't know.

Um I think that's all I got to say.

Anyone have a question?

Well, for public comment, but if we have them during, we will bring you back.

Thank you.

Anyone else from the public wish to speak on um bill 1226?

See none, I'll go to council comments, council questions.

Yeah, Betsy.

Um I just have a question.

Um this has been uh uh rental since 2015.

Have we had any problems?

Um have we heard of it, you know, office of neighborhood services have any issues, or do we check that?

We do.

We look at, I think any history of complaints and like what our staff pulled out that there weren't any history um regarding this uh property.

I couldn't tell you exact number of uh years we go back, but usually we will look, I think, with whatever history we have in the system.

Okay, thank you.

Additional um council comments or questions?

I have one oh yeah, no, it's good.

Um you know, I I want to push back on the idea that R1 needs more protection than other residential zoning categories, R2 and RMF.

Um R1 properties already have larger setbacks.

Um they already have larger frontages and generally larger lots.

Um be focused on nuisances, and those are the same in R2 and RMF as they are in R1.

Um and I believe that R2 RMF neighborhoods deserve the same amount of protection than R1 neighborhoods deserve.

Um I'm extraordinarily impressed with the training and the um effort and the education efforts that our planning and zoning commissioners um take.

Um I know that it's not always an easy um an easy task or an easy ask.

Any other council questions or comments?

I I have one for Clint.

Um Clint, can you in this, I mean, unfortunately, this might be a I don't know if this is a you question or like a Bill Lee question, but so if somebody has a long long-term rental license, like the ability to do a long-term rental license, um, does that prevent them from the the question about that gap, right?

That the applicant brought up.

Um, do they need an STR license to have that?

Do they have to have an FCR license to have that sort of um scenario where they're between I I just want to confirm it, thank you, Betsy, but I'm asking Clint.

Um, like what is you know, what is what is allowed and what's not allowed with the different type of licenses.

Right.

You you would need the short-term license uh if you want to rent for anyone under 30 days for over 30 days, you would need the long-term license.

Okay.

So but you can have both.

You can have both simultaneously on the same page.

Theoretically, this could stay as a long-term rental furnished.

And they just happen to have that short-term.

Is that correct?

Is that how I'm understanding this?

I think they could have a tenant for an annual license.

Yes, how he was ascribing their desire to use the property could absolutely be utilized in that fashion.

They could have several midterm rentals in a year for several months, and then if there was a gap, they could use a short-term rental to fill that gap.

And a midterm rental, is that like like when I hear about like traveling nurses?

Like it's it's not it's longer than 30 days, but it's less than six, is that not your traditional, I think, yearly lease, someone coming in for a short term, uh, whether it's the university or through medical reasons, uh, they might need to be here longer than 30 days.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you for that.

All right.

Um Sheila, we please call roll on bill 1226.

Council Council Bill 1226, Ms.

Carroll?

Yes.

Ms.

Elwood?

Yes.

Ms.

Sample?

Yes.

Ms.

Hartman?

Yes.

Ms.

Peters?

Yes.

Ms.

Buffalo?

Yes.

Thank you.

All right, Sheila, will you please read Bill 12726?

Council Bill 12726 is an ordinance authorizing an air services agreement with Allegiant Air LLC, amending the FY2026 annual budget by appropriating funds in the amount of $82,000 and fixing the time when this ordinance shall become effective.

Second reading.

Do we have a staff report?

Sure.

Good evening, Mayor and Council.

Mike Parks, Airport Manager.

Shannon, I'm happy to bring an agreement with Allegiant Airlines forward to you for consideration regarding air service.

It is is expected to begin on June 3rd to both Orlando and Destin, Florida.

This agreement is for a period of two years for a total cost of 1 million dollars.

Allegiant Airlines has committed to completing an average of five weekly departures during this initial two-year period for a total of 520 flights.

Eight quarterly payments will be made to a Legion during the two-year period in the amount of 125,000.

In addition to this, we will waive the office rent and landing fees during the period and provide marketing support in the amount of 125,000, which is consistent with previous practices.

These new flights will add over 70,000 passengers going through our terminal each year and will make future federal funding for projects easier to achieve based on increased passenger traffic.

Based on an 80 percent load factor, I anticipate will be res we will receive over $800,000 in passenger facility fees, entitlement funds, and other fees during this two-year period.

Allegiant will adjust their schedule through this period based on seasonal demand.

In the event Allegiant doesn't complete the total average flights, we would reduce their payment by that average flight cost at the end of the term.

Allegiant Air is a highly sought-after low-cost carrier that will allow people here in mid-Missouri the opportunity to have direct flights to vacation destinations.

Although this agreement is only for a period of two years, we look forward to a long-term relationship and growth that a Legion will provide to residents in Columbia and Mid-Missouri.

The airport advisory board also supports this action, so I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thanks, Mike.

Um questions for the airport on the allegiance.

Would anyone from the public wish to speak on bill 12726?

See none, I'll come back to the council comments.

Any additional council comments or questions?

Yeah, Christina.

So very new to this.

I mentioned that a few times, I guess, by now.

Um I think one of the things that I'm wondering about here is when we um talk about payments to a private entity.

Um we're also thinking about all the federal I'm trying to like pull it all together, so bear with me.

Um pulling all the federal fund, you know, we have a lot of federal funding that goes into helping support our overall um airport strategy.

Um and so this is just a tiny portion of that overall funding that we get from a federal piece.

Can you speak to that?

Sure.

So uh a breakdown of this uh is we're appropriating $82,000 this evening.

Trying to remember the exact dollar amounts here.

So $118,000 is coming from the private revenue guarantee group, and the rest of that is coming from transportation sales tax.

So uh none of these funds that are being used for this air service agreement are grant funds.

Uh in comparison, like the united agreement.

Uh we utilized federal grant funds for that air service agreement.

These would be local funds only.

Thank you for clarifying.

I didn't I didn't ask my question very well, but you answered it well.

Thank you.

Mike?

No, I appreciate this.

And I appreciate um this is not the first time we're hearing about this.

Obviously, you talked a little bit about the last council meeting as well as our airport update.

So appreciate to see the continuing support for COU.

All right.

I have a couple, but I have a quorum, so we're gonna call roll on this.

Shall we please call roll on bill 127 26?

Council Bill 12726, Ms.

Carroll.

Um Ms.

Elwood.

Yes.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Miss Carroll, did you say come to a microphone?

You don't have to come all the way.

Grab one of their microphones.

Yes.

Ms.

Elwood?

Yes.

Ms.

Sample?

Yes.

Ms.

Hartman.

Yes.

Ms.

Peters.

Yes.

Miss Buffalo.

Yes.

Sorry.

All right.

Moving on to Bill 13226.

Sheila, will you please call that?

Council Bill 1326 is an ordinance amending the FY2026 annual budget by appropriating funds in the amount of $1,425,000 associated with development of the North Village Park located at 210 Ore Street and fixing the time when this ordinance shall become effective second reading.

Do we have a staff report?

Yes, thank you, Mayor Gabe Huffington, Parks and Recreation Director.

This evening I want to talk a little bit about the development of North Village Park as we move through this planning process.

Some project details.

The park is located at 210 Ore Street.

This is located in the first ward.

Our construction project was approved by City Council on March 18th of 2024, and at that point in time had approved funding of $1,550,000.

This was funded by the Park Sales Tax as well as the Missouri ARPA community revitalization grant through the Missouri Department of Economic Development.

Our current project status, McLaren Engineering has worked with us to complete all necessary construction documents, and our permits have been approved by the City of Columbia for the construction process.

Courtney construction is on site now and should finalize site demolition by the end of this week.

The image on the screen reflects the current status of the park in terms of everything outside of existing sidewalks have been removed and clean fill has been placed.

We have also been working with our Office of Cultural Affairs on the public art component of the project and the sculpture on the move program, three public art benches, as well as the public art that will be the park sign are also in the selection and agreement process.

So tonight we'd like to talk about an appropriation of funds to complete the main portion of the project.

Our funding comes from four different sources.

One is the park sales tax at 775,000, our stormwater utility at 193,198, our electric utilities, about 342,000.

And then the capital project interest account, um, just a little over 114,000.

So in terms of where we went and why we have an increase in the in the need for funding, um, as we work through this project with McClure Engineering and multiple city departments, we started to look at the entire city block that is in this area and how we revitalize it essentially to correct some of the the planning issues that we've had for a long time, but then also look at how do we make a park that will be here for a very long time.

First is obviously to correct some of our accessibility issues.

Um photo on the left is the existing sidewalk that is located at the park now.

We also work with the public works department to do some right sizing of roadways.

Um and this is primarily for bus and fire truck access, but then also just general traffic two ways.

So this is Ash Street on the left is Balsama Warehouse, and you can see this two and a half foot-ish sidewalk on this side.

Um what we'll actually do is we'll push the park to the north enough to where we can establish a future sidewalk that's anywhere between six to eight to ten feet wide, have our two lanes of traffic, bike boulevard, and then we would get into the park.

So a lot of discussion on all four sides of the park in terms of roadway widths and sidewalks.

We also, with this appropriation, will allow us to do the proposed uh design of our sidewalk infrastructure that we had originally proposed in the project.

So this initial 14 feet will be a concrete sidewalk, and then we'll have six feet of pavers plus tree walls.

Um so this gives us 20 feet of space on all four sides of the roadway.

So we'll have ample sidewalk for pedestrian use, but then also as we look at a festival at the park, for instance, they would be able to have pop-up tents and still be able to have that traffic way.

We will also plant a number of street trees, and I'll show you that here in just a second, along with pavers.

Um we'll do lighting installation and then we'll have that walkway.

One of the bigger expenses that we have related to the project is the two images that you're seeing here, which is undergrounding overhead electric.

We've worked with the electric utility on how this process will take place.

Um one is on Ash Street on the left.

You can see there's a lot of different components and including a switch gear transformer.

We'll have communication lines that will go underground for some of those private providers, but then also our water and light electric above ground as well will go underneath.

And then on St.

James Street as well, we will take all of that electric and communication lines and that will go underneath as well.

One of the other things that we are proposing to do with this project is something that we've talked about a long time in terms of green infrastructure.

So we are proposing to do silva cell installation, and this is for um I believe it's 21 street trees as we call them, similar to what you would see in the downtown area as we go through the park.

And what it essentially is is all of those green kind of rectangles that you see on that screen, those are silva cells.

So it's basically green infrastructure that combines support for concrete and asphalt road structure, but then also provides us with extended root zone area so that we can grow bigger trees.

So we'll have a combination of trees that are in the grass area, trees that are along our walkways, um, shading streets, shading cars parked, but then this structure will allow us to hopefully have a little more vitality in terms of the trees, longer lifespan as they're able to grow in this route zone.

We have not tried this in terms of other trees in the downtown areas, so this will be a process that we will go through at the park, and then hopefully eventually we'll look at some of our downtown street trees and can be able to implement this as well.

Another portion of the project that we've looked at as we started to look at different improvements, we will relocate two water lines that are existing in the park structure.

Um they are both currently in the porous paper parking areas, and so those will move inside to the park in the concrete sidewalk grass areas, and then we will also relocate.

There are three existing um fire hydrants that are located in the park, and those will move as well to be out of the way in grass areas.

In addition to this, there is a box culvert on St.

James Street.

Um one of the things kind of as we looked at this project was to correct the water flow off St.

James Street in red is the existing path for that box culvert.

Um with the proposed construction, we will have our contractor um exit that piece, but then put in the the new box culvert that's shown in blue.

This will help control that water, move it through faster, get it off of the roadway.

And then around all four sides of the park, there are new stormwater inlets that have to also be installed.

Um so as we're capturing water off of those roadways, um, we'll reset those and those new stormwater inlets will be installed as part of the construction project.

So, in terms of target completion date, um this project has to be done by December 31st of 2026.

Along with the work that will be done by our contractor, parks and recreation staff will do turf and landscape establishment, tree planting.

Um our hope is we'll be installing public art by the end of this year.

And then there is a playground plaza that our parks and recreation staff will help construct as well.

As an end result, we will show a park that looks very similar to this in terms of improvements on all four sides of the park, underground electric, um, kind of right sizing all of our sidewalks, roadways, um, and then we'll have a large open green space for the public to use along with almost 50 new trees located on this two-acre site.

So staff is requesting approval of the legislation that would authorize the funding appropriation for the construction of North Village Park, and I'm happy to answer any questions you may have at this time.

Any questions for Gabe?

Yeah, Betsy.

How is it you think you're gonna have this done by the end of December?

So two different factors.

Number one, with the appropriation of funds, we will issue the notice proceed to Reinhardt construction tomorrow.

Um we've been working through that process.

Um part of the reason we knew where our appropriation needed to be was we worked with them once the bids closed for the project.

Um we've communicated that with Missouri Department of Economic Development, so they're aware as well.

And so they are aware of our timeline in the contract, their number of construction days coincides with completion by December.

In terms of parks and recreation construction staff, we currently have five active projects, and the goal is to have all five of those projects wrapped up by about September 1st so that we re can relocate two to three teams to this project to be able to complete it.

Okay, thank you.

Yep.

And yeah, Ballery.

Do you have any and I apologize?

I missed the first few slides.

Do you have any plans for this to communicate with the future Colt Trail as well as the bicycle boulevard that goes straight through there along Ash, East Ash, and St.

Joseph?

Yep.

So the bike boulevard will will remain.

Uh back when we talked about this project in 2024, we actually had angled pull in parking.

Um of the comments that we got was to remove the angled pull and parking and just do some parallel spots on ash so that we can continue to have the bike boulevard.

So that will continue to be exist.

We are looking at how we connect from North Village Park to the Colt Railroad, which would be at Rogers.

Potential sidewalk improvements.

There's some connectivity.

That's kind of that ongoing discussion, yes.

Yeah, I had a lot of questions about potential sidewalk improvements.

And I know like some of those might be in a separate project.

But I guess first of all, you addressed the moving parking spots.

I saw that those are kind of moving to slanted and then kind of dipped into the park area.

There's a lot of housing along there.

Dave, can you go back to the slide with improvements?

And I apologize.

No, I'm calling this out.

It was exactly the ones you missed.

Yeah, it was exactly the ones you missed.

This was discussed in detail in another public hearing recently.

And I want to make sure that I give it the intention so it's well understood because I think that not all of these documents were attached for the conversation that was had last Wednesday, I think.

Um not sure.

So this is information that the public really needs.

Yeah, they're not ADA compliant.

We need a sidewalk renovation.

Um there was concerned about where renovation would go.

Would people how that would fit next to Ore Street Studio?

Would they lose parking?

Um, and if you don't mind pulling up the drawing of the park footprint.

Um what I'm seeing here is that the proposal is to move on the Ash Street side on the far right.

Yeah, so Ash Street has it has four parallel parking spots along with two ADA parallel parking spots.

And then the majority of our new parking all takes place on St.

James Street, and that is angled parking off of that roadway.

Um and then on Park Avenue, we have four spots that are a little bit longer in terms of length, and that was if we had food trucks or another vendor that would need that space.

Um back in the original discussion, we had a number of additional parking spaces beyond what we were approved by city council.

Um, one of the public kind of public comments feedback that we received was to reduce that number.

So we landed on just over 20, some to 30 parking spaces.

Yeah.

So, you know, I'm usually not a person who's like, I want a lot of parking in a public park.

I am not.

I want this to act as a non-driving transportation hub that serves the local population, and that brings people without cars into downtown.

That said, there's often been parking pressure on St.

James because of the on-street meter parking.

Um I love that we're adding non-motorized transportation, and that we're moving that parking out, bumping it into the park so that the street can accommodate more non-motorized transportation wherever that second project plan goes.

Um I think that it will be great.

Um, I think it will help people get to and from even in the area along the uh we're still in questions.

We're still in questions.

Do you have any more questions?

Uh my question was please show this information to the public.

Thank you.

Yeah, yep.

Uh Christina had a question.

Do you have a calendar already filling up of things that want to go into this park or activities that are wanting to happen here?

So we've had a couple.

Um we will partner pretty closely with North Village Arts District first Fridays.

We know those events.

Um we would love to bring a family fun fest back down to downtown.

We outgrew our space at Flat Branch Park.

Um and then the other we know that for instance Pride Fest has outgrown their space, and so they are looking for expansion as well.

And so some of those things will obviously go through park special use permit process, but we definitely have some plans.

And then the other kind of neat feature for us will be Armory Summer Camps.

Um they will now have a space directly down the street that's about it's almost an acre and a half of grass that they'll be able to utilize for camp as well.

How far away from I'll look it up later.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

First half.

Would anyone from the public wish to speak about on bill 132 26, the North Village Park?

Dicky Davis, the district, downtown CAD, 11 South 10th Street.

I'm not gonna belabor this.

I think we all know this is an amazing.

We are super excited about this.

One of the many things that we could talk about is the amount of family friendly events that we can bring to the downtown area.

Um but it's also been on the district's um priority list since 2012 when we were created as to underground our power lines.

So that is super exciting for us.

We also know that um uh parks in an urban area are huge for not only mental health, um, but as we grow towards the north in the downtown area, this will be the most beautiful way to do that.

Um so we really hope that you guys support this and thank you for your time.

Thank you, Nikki.

Anyone else from the public wish to speak on Bill 1326?

Hi, my name is Tudy Burns.

I'm an artist in the North Village Arts District.

I've served on the park committee, and I serve on the North Village Arts District Board.

I'm thrilled to be continuing to talk about this.

Um I'm 60 years old now, and I started talking about this when I was 40 when we started advocating.

Nikki and Gabe were in high school.

So I appreciate so much the members of the council who have supported this over the years.

This is an amazing opportunity for our downtown area.

I think you all recognize that.

And it's a special location and requires special considerations and development opportunities.

Gabe has worked really hard to make sure that we are developing the best park for downtown.

North Village is thrilled for this to bring additional programming, First Friday opportunities, district opportunities, PrideFest can grow.

We can welcome new uh festivals to the area.

So thank you for your support of this amendment.

It's it's going to make our downtown a better place.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Anyone else from the public wish to speak on bill 132 26?

Seeing none, we'll go to council comments.

Valerie, would you like to make a comment?

Now I can make comments.

Um this is a long meeting, and you can't take any potty breaks.

Um the trees, Gabe, the trees, it's amazing.

That is an extraordinary amount of effort to get some trees that we need.

I can't wait to see this piloted downtown for those roots to grow.

Um the tree canopy for the neighbors and those living there.

It's a big deal.

Um the investment for the people living there, for the people visiting, it's a big deal.

Um, so this has my absolute support.

Um signage for bike transportation.

I should say non-motorized transportation.

Um bike boulevard and a future major trail that can bring people from blue collar housing into downtown shopping district, downtown employment district.

Um I'm really looking forward to that and its proximity here.

Um I always notice that our signage for bike boulevards that are north of Broadway compared to our signage of the older bark bike boulevards that are south of Broadway.

It's a lot different.

It's a lot harder to notice and navigate.

Um I think a park would be a good place to put a hub that says this many miles to this boulevard, this many miles to this trail.

Um, and it would be great if you could accommodate that.

Any other council comments on this?

I'll just add, um, I appreciate the it's more than a park.

It's a lot of infrastructure improvements, and so thank you for the cross-departmental collaboration on that.

It'll be good to see when it is done when we're riding our bikes down to Beckfall Farm.

Sheila, will you please uh call roll on bill 13226?

Council Bill 1326, Miss Carroll?

Yes.

Ms.

Elwood?

Yes.

Ms.

Sample?

Yes.

Ms.

Hartman.

Yes.

Ms.

Peters?

Yes.

Miss Buffalo?

Yes.

All right.

And then our last item on old business.

Uh, Sheila, will you please read Bill 12326?

Council Bill 12326 is an ordinance granting the issuance of conditional use permit to Dirk Mai and Isla Marzolf to allow the operation of a short-term rental and property located 802 North 6th Street, providing a severability clause and fixing the time when this ordinance shall become effective second rating.

Do we have a staff report?

Yes.

Thank you.

Mayor, uh council.

So this is a short-term rental conditional use permit, uh similar to the last case that we did discuss.

This one is located at 802 North 6th Street.

Coincidentally, uh this one also uh was subject of a modification to the request kind of mid um hearing.

Uh it was uh the original request was for 210 nights per year with six guests, and they did modify that down uh to four guests.

Um again, they had the infrastructure on hand for two parking spaces for the four guests.

Six would have required more um concrete to accommodate parking space.

And then given some of the feedback, there were some concerns raised about stormwater in this area.

Um so they did kind of self-restrict themselves down to four guests during that uh during that hearing.

So this was a a public hearing as well with uh notifications sent out to surrounding property owners.

Uh just a little context for this property.

See um kind of the north portion of this block on uh North Sixth Street.

Um Hickman High School directly to the north of this site.

Um the property itself uh is zoned RMF, uh not the primary residence.

So again, the need for that conditional use permit.

Surrounding property uh does have also a mix of some RMF and R2 properties well.

Uh the site itself is three bedrooms.

Uh six guests, which is the original requested require the three parking spaces with the regulation down to uh four guests.

Uh the two spaces were currently on site should meet that requirement.

Uh the property has been previously offered as a short-term rental.

And I'll come back to that here in a second.

Um no additional short-term rentals, though, are within this 300-foot radius of this site, uh, and that four of the 67 surrounding property owners appear to be owner occupied.

So uh they do have a designated agent um living within 2.6 miles.

Um during the hearing, it was uh discussed uh that they did receive an illegal operation notice after the um kind of enforcement deadline of la uh middle of last year.

Um so that is the the one enforcement that we do have um on this property.

I can say I think some of the uh concerns from the Plan Zoning Commission was that lack of um submission of an application for short-term rental, even after that deadline and notification had been sent out.

Uh during the discussion at the hearing, though, I think there was uh some uh testimony by the applicant or by their agent that the original notice that it went out was not received by them as it went to I think the property address and not the owner address.

So perhaps some confusion receiving that notification.

Um we did receive a letter in opposition um I think with the preference again that the the property re uh remain in a long-term rental status.

Um again, I won't repeat this.

This is kind of our our general statements, I think, on on uh staff's analysis that the conditional permit, conditional use permit analysis did support compliance.

Uh a couple things though, I'll additionally note about the planning zoning commission.

There was two speakers there that spoke in opposition.

Uh one is I I did discuss, had concerns with the addition of uh impervious pavement uh regarding stormwater implications, and and that somewhat was addressed, I think, with the reduction in the parking.

Uh the other, I think was uh again one we've heard before is that concern with with the loss of housing uh and long-term housing for residents in this neighborhood.

There was a speaker that did speak in support who had lived uh in proximity to this and and reported that had never had any issues or concerns with the management of that property as it had operated as a short-term rental for perhaps the last two years.

Uh the motion by plan zoning to uh approve this passed four to two, and I think that was some of the concerns was that lack of immediate compliance.

Uh there are, I think some sentiment on the Planning Zoning Commission that uh that's a very important, I think, component of short-term rental operation is is uh responsible ownership and responsible management of those sites.

And so I think that's maybe where you saw two individuals not in support uh of this application.

Uh recommendation though tonight is to approve the requested short-term rental with a max occupancy of four guests and two hundred and ten nights per year, and I'd be happy to answer any questions.

Questions for staff from council.

Yeah, Christina.

Uh newbie question again.

Umere any considerations made in terms of the allowing STRs in a certain proximity of schools and stuff, or has that ever been discussed or thought about?

That is not a specific criteria.

And that was not raised as a concern as it is some sort of impact to the to the surrounding areas, no.

Thank you.

Additional questions, yeah, Valerie.

I wonder if you can give us any background about considerations around the 300 foot radius and how we arrived at 300 feet, um, what the purpose is.

Um I wasn't not here necessarily when this was drafted, but from my conversations and becoming familiar with this, the 300-foot radius, to my understanding, was really to uh address the concerns with a concentration within one specific area.

So really an impact on one uh concentrated area where you might have uh if there were impacts of short-term rental where they may be multiplied because you have so many in such uh close proximity.

And also to reduce, I think the impacts of taking away um long-term housing in any one specific neighborhood.

So it is really uh about distributing them throughout, I think the city and and not having them concentrated uh in in one specific area based on on certain factors.

Um I'm struggling because I'm not sure if that's working for us.

And I'm wondering if there are any other discussions sense that relate to density of short-term rentals and density of housing.

Conversations as in amendments that we might be proposing going forward.

I mean, I I can speak to the current amendment that we have kind of on the table, if you will, that that council had had uh had heard about in our work session.

That um could address some of the concerns with that proximity.

Currently, the administratively approved short-term rentals do not count within that 300 foot radius with that amendment uh that kind of levels the playing field for all of our short-term rentals, and so all applicants would be required to meet that 300-foot radius setback.

And the administratively approved ones, those are ones that would be what most people refer to as owner-occupied or a primary residence.

Correct.

I think I think a lot of them would be that.

I think there's certain ones that might fall into the category of being commercially zoned that don't require conditional use approval as well.

Um I think you may see maybe one or two in this area.

I think there are ones on range line that are in commercially zoned areas.

So in a residential area that abuts commercial zoning, there may be more.

It's possible.

Um, I'm wondering if we've revisited um calculating the density in an area.

So how many units are operating as STRs compared to how much housing is available in an area as opposed to the radius?

Um and that was tricky to calculate, and that's why we didn't end up there the first time.

Um but as we have more data, um, particularly as we have um electronic data scrubbing packages.

I wonder if that's gotten any easier.

To determine what the density would be.

Mm-hmm.

Well, that's the same.

I don't know if I want to warrant a guess on how easy or not it would be for us to calculate that.

Uh if it's something that um we were directed to to look into, we would certainly I think take those steps.

I could say we have um a number of things right now that we're working on too, and so it it would be something we could we could probably uh and we already have an amendment kind of queued up for this as well.

So I don't don't mean to to put it off, but just to paint a realistic picture, I think, of that one.

Um how is the onboarding for that um software package going?

Is that live yet?

It's not quite live yet.

Uh live in the sense that I think we're taking uh specific actions with that.

We we have the data.

We we are able to, I think, uh review it.

We have decided to take a couple extra steps.

One of those is working on kind of a landing page for short-term rental information for the community so that when we do take our next steps, which uh likely would be um really uh additional enforcement steps that we are directing people to go to a place that to have all the resources they need to make sure they're coming into compliance.

And if you're a resident, a location you can go to find out how you um access the ability to report concerns.

And so um once it's up and running, I think uh here shortly we should be able to move ahead with some things.

I would uh suggest that anyone operating right now without a license uh should uh we'd certainly encourage them to go ahead and start that process uh because we do have uh much better data on where those are located now.

Yeah, when we evaluate 300 feet.

I know we do that based on 300 feet from licensed ones.

Um I think that gives parity between applications.

Um but are we aware of any unlicensed ones in that area?

Not that I know of that we're taking enforcement action on.

Uh not specifically.

I can't say for for sure.

Thanks.

Additional questions for staff.

Um I I have a couple um Clinton, and I don't know if it's possible to have this knowledge.

I don't know if you do or if the applicants here, they might answer it during theirs, but like how long has it been an SDR?

Because you mentioned in the council memo and the staff memo that it had been previously operated in SR.

Do we know how long it had been operating as STR and what was it before that?

Some reason two years sticks my mind, but that I I don't want to throw that out there without confirming that, or if the applicant was here and could confirm that yes, they're here, so maybe during uh comments.

I would encourage them during their public comment to answer that.

Right.

Any other council questions?

All right, would anyone from the public wish to speak on Bill 12326 uh short-term rental conditional use permit for 802 North Sixth Street?

Hello.

Print is very small.

Hi, I'm Ailea Marzov, owner of 802 North Sixth Street.

Um before I forget to answer the question, um two years is correct.

Um we bought this house with the intention to live in it.

We moved in, started renovating, and started planning our lives here.

I was currently pregnant at the time.

Then my husband was offered a job back in Los Angeles that was way too good to pass up and wouldn't allow us to stay in Missouri.

So the solution was to make it a short-term rental.

We love being here.

We come multiple times a year for weeks at a time, usually a month in the summer, and probably more now that my sister just had a baby.

Um without this home as a short-term rental, we wouldn't be able to spend nearly that much time in Columbia.

As a family of four, we can't stay in a hotel or my sister's guest room for weeks at a time.

My older son has friends on the street, dreams of playing soccer at Hickman, where my entire family and I all went to high school, and we are very much invested in Columbia as its well-being and growth and the beauty that the city has to offer.

When we first started hearing about the new Airbnb guidelines, it wasn't clear to us when or how these guidelines may come into effect.

Any and all notices had been going to the House on Sixth Street rather than to our residents in California, so we were already behind.

That has since been remedied, and the city now has our Los Angeles um address listed for communications.

Beyond that, it was a bit confusing and difficult to navigate as someone who does not work in real estate and did not know what much of that meant.

Um I tried figuring out a few times, looking at the website.