© 2024 University of Missouri - KBIA
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Matthes: City Makes Progress on Social Equity, Public Safety; Faces Lean Budget

Mike Matthes
/
City of Columbia website

Columbia made steps toward social equity but also faces a lean budget, Columbia City Manager Mike Matthes said in his state of the city address today. 

"We have begun to close the employment gap between white and black Columbians. The American Community Survey measures unemployment by race; they’ve measured it since 2005. The gap is now the smallest we’ve ever seen," Matthes said. "When the City Council established the strategic plan, African American unemployment was 15.5% in Columbia. Today it’s 11.9%. We still have work to do, but we’re gaining on our goal." 

Looking to public safety, he credited community outreach policing efforts for significant decreases in crime in three neighborhoods. 

"Overall, if you add all of these together, we experienced a 30% drop in crime in just one year in our strategic plan neighborhoods. This kind of work sends ripples throughout the city. When crime drops this far in a part of the city, it drops in all of the city."

Matthews also lauded higher graduation rates for African American students in Columbia Public Schools, and jobs Aurora Organic Dairy will bring to Columbia. 

But, Matthes said, online shopping continues to affect retail jobs in Columbia and affect tax revenue.

"We have, and we will continue to have, a serious revenue problem. We built our funding system on a sales tax approach with no notion of a nontaxable online world. The world has changed."

Matthes said the city must move away from sales tax as a funding source and should look to property tax for future ballots for public safety and roads.

Listen to the full address below, or click hereto read the text. 

matthes_full.mp3

Sara Shahriari was the assistant news director at KBIA-FM, and she holds a master's degree from the Missouri School of Journalism. Sara hosted and was executive producer of the PRNDI award-winning weekly public affairs talk show Intersection. She also worked with many of KBIA’s talented student reporters and teaches an advanced radio reporting lab. She previously worked as a freelance journalist in Bolivia for six years, where she contributed print, radio and multimedia stories to outlets including Al Jazeera America, Bloomberg News, the Guardian, the Christian Science Monitor, Deutsche Welle and Indian Country Today. Sara’s work has focused on mental health, civic issues, women’s and children’s rights, policies affecting indigenous peoples and their lands and the environment. While earning her MA at the Missouri School of Journalism, Sara produced the weekly Spanish-language radio show Radio Adelante. Her work with the KBIA team has been recognized with awards from the Society of Professional Journalists and PRNDI, among others, and she is a two-time recipient of funding from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.