The city of Columbia has some looming financial concerns and continues to struggle with social disparity and police department dissatisfaction, City Manager Mike Matthes said during his annual State of the City address Wednesday morning.
I'm "excited about our path forward, but there are some storm clouds ahead," Matthes said to a crowd of about 100 city leaders and residents gathered at City Hall.
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Matthes' annual presentation focused on the progress the city has made during the past year on its strategic plan, which aims to make Columbia a place where all residents can thrive. The plan is broken down into five focus areas: social equity, public safety, infrastructure, economy and operational excellence.
In terms of social equity, Matthes said the city still has a wide gap between its white and minority populations. The city has conducted citizen surveys since 2003, and the most recent one found 74 percent of residents felt "satisfied" they could thrive in Columbia — satisfaction rates were 78 percent for white residents and 54 percent for black residents.
Matthes said he is proud of the progress the city has made to close the gap. This past year, the city employed several part-time individuals to connect with neighbors and minority business owners in three underserved and neglected areas. The city also established a community outreach unit in the Columbia Police Department to focus on the three neighborhoods.
"We also allocated more funds for first-time homebuyers and affordable housing in three neighborhoods," Matthes said. "We started setting up a community land trust" to stabilize housing prices.
Matthes also spoke about progress made by a team of individuals employed to implement the strategic plan's focus on social equity, noting the effort was funded through one-time city surplus funds. Although team members are on short-term contracts, he said, the city plans to set aside funds for social equity work.
"That's just something that we're going to have to deal with each year when the budget comes up," he said.
The city's available discretionary funding has taken a hit because of stagnating sales tax revenue, Matthes said. He said there is no funding in next year's budget to hire new personnel and that the city is closely watching its revenue.
Matthes' address noted problems with public safety — he said there continues to be a problem with citizen satisfaction in the Columbia Police Department and resident perceptions of safety. According to the citizen surveys, both measures have fallen drastically since 2003.
Overall citizen satisfaction with the police department dropped from 78 percent in 2003 and 81 percent in 2005 to an all-time low of 59 percent in 2015.
Residents' perception of safety took a similar dip, with 77 percent of residents reporting in 2003 they were "satisfied" that the city is keeping them safe compared with 54 percent reporting satisfaction in 2015.
National polls point to a similar dip in satisfaction and trust in police departments nationwide. Between 2003 and 2015, Gallup found national confidence in police dropped from 61 percent to 52 percent.
In an interview after the news conference, Matthes said he was not sure whether the 20 percent drop in police department satisfaction indicated Columbia is an outlier in the nation.
"It's been a general erosion over time in police satisfaction nationally," he said.
With the police department being as underfunded as it is, establishing and using the community outreach unit is all the city can think of doing at this time to address the trend, Matthes said. The city does not have as much money to pour into new programs but knows community policing works, he said.
Finding money to hire additional police officers as the city's population grows has been difficult because the amount of tax revenue the city receives per capita has fallen over the years, Matthes said.
Matthes said the overall crime rate has been on a downward trend for decades and that the downward trend in the perception of safety partially can be explained by media coverage of national shootings and dissatisfaction with police departments. In conjunction with the most recent citizen survey, the city conducted focus groups where participants said national media coverage played a role in feeling unsafe.
Many people "said local media had influenced their perception of safety" and "acknowledged the effects of Ferguson and shootings across the country when looking at their perception of safety," Matthes said.
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Source: City manager: Racial disparity, satisfaction with police continued problem
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