Your Comments (9-1-08)

My gosh, now that I am back on a bicycle, riding 25-40 miles, I have way too much energy. It keeps me up working and writing. It has been 8 years that I have been off the bike, and it was my life before that, including my old shop, The Cyclist. Great times.

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Columbia Bankrupt

It is quite a compliment when someone like editorial writer Warren Bolton of The State feels the need to counter my article on the city being bankrupt (http://www.thestate.com/editorial-columns/story/505493.html). He sounded as if was making apologies for the city while defending Coble & Co. with a denial of the facts. Warren’s logic was quite fuzzy and contradictory. Use his numbers (if you can) and see what it comes to be. Then add in for the sewer and water system (a city official stated $100 million, according to a Columbia Star report), the $5 million+ we owe county, the potential liability for the hotel suit, another million for a water tank that needs immediate attention, more money for police, money for Christmas lights, money to add electrical on Main St for the lights (this was overlooked in the Main St revitalization, according to a The State article), COLAs, etc. Then tell Warren what you get. The city does not know what it has. Austin cannot give council current financials, so it is all speculative as to the city’s finances. But when Austin has to ask the merchants for Christmas money, you know it is bad, real bad.

Warren needs to reread Adam Beam’s article, then his own. His math needs a refresher course.

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Joe,

how are you? It has been a while.

So I read this and it really makes me wonder.....how some of our officials get appointed in the first place. Is nobody out to look after the Citys health anymore. Maybe when they were first elected but then everyone gets lost in the web of beaurocracies, responsibility, and solving their own problems. I agree with others. When they audit the City funds they should know who was responsible for which losses. That is the purpose of an audit....to provide accountability. It would be incomplete if done any other way. The the people can decide what to do.....we do live in a democracy still, so maybe the voice of the people can decide....if we ever get that far.

Unfortunately, I don't see nor expect much to happen or even change in the future. I would love to be proven wrong. Columbia has has been led by a bad example, our national budget. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

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Hey Joe,

Bet you didn't know that the city just hired a NEW Deputy Assistant to the Finance Director. This is a NEW position at $85,000 per year. That does NOT include the salary of the NEW Finance Director that they still have to hire since the surmise of Lisa (incompetent) Roland. That salary is over $100,000 more. They are also paying a CPA firm thousands weekly to try to get the books audited. Something screwy here! Don't you think?

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Joe,

A. The City is "managementally" bankrupt.

b. Can the Mayor be impeached/recalled?

jsa- A. Yes, that too.

B. I just got a new basket of peaches at the market today. Lets go for it! (That is an interesting question. Here you can find the code of laws: http://www.municode.com/resources/gateway.asp?pid=13167&sid=40. It may be covered under state law as my quick search did not show any recall. Maybe more in depth search will reveal something.)

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But we have money to hire consultants for ad phrases and retail studies and hire more employees in the hysterical preservation department, etc. Then there’s the airline, the prison redevelopment, oh, it hurts to even go on…

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Another financial issue that needs to be examined is how much money the City takes from the water revenues. As a non city resident who pays Columbia for water, I have become very concerned with how City Council constantly spends water revenues for general City expenses. In essence, Columbia is taxing non-residents to pay for all kind of crap. I have written every member of the Lexington County Delegation with my concerns and have gotten great support in seeking a solution for keeping the City from conducting this practice. As corrupt and inept as Columbia City Government is and as mismanaged as Columbia's finances are, at least City residents can vote on those that spend their money. Non-residents have no say yet Columbia spends tens upon tens of millions of non-resident water revenue for general expense. How much worse will City finances get when Columbia has to stop diverting this money?

jsa-Robbing the water revenues over the years has made council lazy. It also has shortchanged the maintenance of the system. The water rates should be illegal, and would be if a private company was supplying water as state law prevents a water utility from profits of 35-50%. I have said for years that budgeting should be set up on a knowledge basis of deterioration of the system. If it is known certain pipes last 50 years and then need replacing, 2% should be put away yearly to cover that need. The interest from that money can be used for more maintenance, and most especially for greatly unexpected contingencies.

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Well,
Sadly, does anybody care, will there be screaming and demands for a better shake for the folks living here. I couldn't understand why everybody wasn't screaming; first at the salaries being paid by the city for some employees; second by the planned increase in property taxes and water. Unfortunately unless there is a miracle I will never be out there fighting again. For years people talked about an oversight committee for the Police Department, maybe it is time to talk about a financial oversight committee for the city. Or maybe we need to insist the council go back to school and take courses in financial responsibility.

jsa-Or maybe we just need to replace them all.

To go orders...should you tip?

Hi Joe,

I need your expertise in helping figure something out for me, if you don’t mind.

I was eating out with the Lake Murray Jaycees last night and an interesting topic of discussion came up. One side of the table said that tipping should be done for to go orders because whatever the total amount of sales for the night whether it is to-go orders or dine-in orders is taxed. It was also stated that Richland and Lexington Counties passed a law about a year ago that to-go orders were to cost more to include the tip therefore you don’t have to tip. Or something like that, please know that I am no law expert. We asked the restaurant where we were eating and they said they charge the same for to-go and dine-in orders. On wis-tv Monday night a report was done on how to save some extra money. One of the ways suggested was to order the food to go vs. dining in to save the 15% tip. I don’t want to be shortchanging our valuable servers if they are supposed to get tipped on to-go orders

jsa-You already saw me and got my opinion, so let’s see what readers think.

jsa-How appropriate an article sent from an astute reader on the possible eve of another New Orleans hurricane.

Better buffer than levees

Water management and retreat from flood plains make more sense and cost less.

By Steffen Schmidt from the July 9, 2008 edition

Seattle - This week more than $2.3 million in government disaster assistance grants was approved for Illinois residents affected by the flooding. Rather than continue spending massive amounts of government money on haphazard cleanup efforts after disasters that hit the Midwest and Louisiana, let's take some realistic measures.

One immediate response to the horrible Midwest flooding has been the pronouncement that the Army Corps of Engineers must build bigger and higher levees. But as The Economist magazine recently observed with regard to Britain, there are several problems with that approach.

Urbanization has reduced the ability of land to absorb rainfall that in past centuries remained stored "locally." Today that water has no place to go but into storm sewers, creeks, and then heavily levied rivers.

Climate change experts predict new weather patterns that include droughts in some places, heavier rainfall in other areas, and decades of much more severe tropical storm patterns along the Gulf and East Coast. We know that the levees in New Orleans did not hold. Recent reports indicate that the rebuilt levees today would not even hold with a Category 2 hurricane. That means the levee of the future would have to be a "superlevee" – more elaborate than anything we have ever built.

Those bigger and "better" levees come with financial and social costs – someone downstream will inevitably suffer the consequences. We can't control nature, and when we try, we selectively benefit certain parcels of land and communities.

Like squeezing a balloon, though, the floods will pop out from levees – no matter how big they are – through the next weak spot. Sandbags are just not a policy.

So, what to do?

As a compassionate society, we need to help communities and affected citizens get back on their feet. But after that, managing the collection of water is the only fiscally sound policy to pursue going forward.

We don't have the budgets to continually increase levee heights. The billions of dollars spent on some levees would be much better invested buying out landowners whose property is worth less than the cost of the defenses it would take to save their land.

American communities and policymakers at all levels can prohibit new construction in flood plains. Let's discontinue flood insurance. Let's discontinue federal and state bailouts that make it worth taking the risk of building in dubious places.

We should concentrate greater resources on protecting assets that cannot realistically be purchased or moved. This would strengthen areas that we have no choice but to protect from flooding.

We need to integrate levee protection so that it is not a "patchwork" of uncoordinated structures built by different agencies and jurisdictions. The 272-page report prepared after the 1993 floods in Iowa pointed this out, and for good reason.

Local, federal, and state governments should develop an integrated strategic flooding plan that deliberately designates "safety valves" along US rivers and tributaries prone to extreme flooding. By creating places where water can flow all the way up and down waterways and coastal areas with minimal damage, it relieves flood pressure downstream from densely populated communities. Just like a valve on pressure cookers, built in safety valves would be a place where rivers could blow out with less damage.

Resistance to this "managed retreat" approach will be fierce from landowners, developers, and the US Army Corps of Engineers. Because, without clear compensation, they will see a threat to their interests.

However, evidence points to this new management system as sound, doable, and realistic.

With rising healthcare costs, rusting bridges, faltering schools, and other needs, local, state, and federal governments will not have the tax revenue to undertake an huge overhaul of man-made armor such as dams and superlevees throughout the country.

Instead, total coordination is our best chance at preventing the waste of millions of taxpayer dollars.

Steffen Schmidt is a professor of political science at Iowa State University. He researches and lectures on coastal policy at the Nova Southeastern University Oceanographic Center in Dania Beach, Fla.

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