Newly Elected Aldermen

Columbia’s newly elected aldermen will be sworn in tonight at the city council meeting. They made a number of claims throughout the election process, mostly regarding how important new non-residential development is to the future of Columbia.

The mayor has always said that new development is necessary for the future of Columbia. It is needed to give some relief to the strained municipal budget and to offset the need for higher rates on residential property taxes.

The mayor and newly elected aldermen appear to share a great number of beliefs regarding non-residential development in Columbia. I would think anything short of a number of new places to shop and eat in Columbia would mark their terms as elected officials as failures. I am not sure how they intend to attract new businesses to Columbia in a way that makes fiscal sense to Columbia and its future; I hope they have a good plan. I suppose filling our current TIF district would be a good start but I would suspect something larger could be in the works.

After the last election cycle when Mark Roessler took over the reins from Jay Unnerstall the Programmatic Agreement from Columbia Crossing was reintroduced, it quickly settled back into the shadows. We’ll all be waiting to see if a large scale development is proposed or talked about in the coming months.

The way in which I have seen the newly elected aldermen act and some comments I have received from them lead me to believe they have spent a great deal of time discussing the issues facing Columbia with one another. They will now have all of those discussions in a public forum and be judged by those who elected them.

The aldermen leaving should be thanked for their time to the city. If you disagreed with them, their still entitled to your thanks, they have spent their time doing what they felt was right for the city, and I feel they never hid what they stood for. I can honestly say I have not always thought the four of them made the best choices but they would explain their position if I asked them about it, which is not always easy for people in elected positions to do. My thanks go out to Aldermen Stumpf, Row, Hejna, & Oberkfell for the time they served the city.