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Columbia City Council meets December 12, 2007
$$$ Bud Addison, audit senior manager at Webster Rogers LLP, reviewed the city's fiscal year 2005/2006 comprehensive annual financial report. Finlay invited everyone, audience included, to attend a full disclosure session on the city's money matters of two years' past at Doc's Barbecue and Southern Buffet on Shop Road at 5:30 the next afternoon, Thursday, December 13. Beginning six weeks earlier, Finlay invited council and a large contingent of his District 4 constituents to the occasion, where he thought the city's audit senior manager could be present to field questions about how and where the city spends the constituents' money. Finlay offered to pay for the audit senior manager's time. Other than Rickenmann, council took the day before the planned event to object to the event, relentlessly trying to cancel the event. Rickenmann offered the motion to encourage Finlay to hold his function at his own expense and to encourage each district council member to also play host to a similar function.
Business Tony Lawton, director of the city's Office of Business Opportunities, announced Dennis Corporation as the December 2007 Business Spotlight Program Honoree, whatever that is. Dogs and cats Jim Sonefeld, president of the Animal Mission, reported on the Mission's history, still in its first year. Private donations, so far, come to $107,000. Sonefeld suggested a reasonable time to actually see a drop in the unwanted pets population would be between four and eight years after the spay/neuter efforts began, which was less than a year ago.
Char les Austin reported on the Police Department, the financial audit, general obligation bonds, the city's energy audit, and the city's winter shelter. Recently retired SLED Chief Robert Stewart will be helping Columbia locate a new police chief. Staff City staff reports included the Five Points Master Plan, security cameras, the express review implementation at the Development Center, and the Housing First Program. Accommodations taxes Ken May and Libby Gober, the city's ombudsman, reviewed the Accommodations Tax Advisory Committee report. Wastewater plant John Dooley, the city's director of utilities, said the proposed levees for the revived Green Diamond development in the Congaree floodway/floodplain would be 500 feet closer but still 1,000 feet from the city's wastewater treatment plant. The plant was flooded in 1976, and the city had to pay Burwell Manning more than $4 million for the damages to his crops and property caused by the overrun of raw sewage.
Developer Clif Kinder, representing a five- member LLC, testified his group's wishes to gain sewer service from the city as soon as practical, having spent 28 months dealing with Richland County and their delayed actions to enter the sewer service business. Kinder's development is just beyond Trotter Road, which is also just beyond the city's sewer lines, or their 208 district, as city types and their developer customers call it. Code Enforcement Task Force Reverend Wiley Cooper, committee chair, asked council for a representative from Two Notch Road and asked for an assigned city employee, someone who can consistently show up at each meeting on time. Also, one of the city's legal people is needed, as there are two many legal questions coming up at each meeting. Redevelopment of Kenny's Auto site Council approved the second reading of the zoning request by the developers of the Kenny's site, to include the height allowance of 5.5 floors. Sinclair, however, stressed that the height allowance was due only to the city's parking on the 2nd and 3rd floors. If the city chooses to locate its public parking elsewhere, said Sinclair, the project's height is automatically reduced to 3.5 floors. The developers cannot privatize the two levels of public parking to gain the two levels of exceptional height.
Council meets on Wednesday, January 9, 9 am at City Hall, corner of Laurel and Main.
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