Columbia

Columbia-area environmental groups wanted to know Columbia City Council candidates’ thoughts about related issues facing the city.

These groups, which included Citizens’ Climate Lobby of Columbia, Climate Leaders at Mizzou, Local Motion, Mid-Missouri Group Sierra Club, Mid-Missouri Peaceworks and Renew Missouri, held a candidate forum Wednesday from the commission chambers of the Boone County Government Center.

Much of the focus was on the city’s Climate Action and Adaptation Plan, the push for the city to use 100% renewable energy sources by 2030 and the city’s recycling and trash systems.

The pandemic took wind out of the sails in regards to the city’s climate plans, said Gregg Bush, Fifth Ward council candidate, adding that with population increases, the city is going to have to increase power capacity and should move toward more renewable energy.

He is in favor of pushing the city forward toward the 100% by 2030 goal encouraged by the environmental groups.

“I’m an ambitious person and this is an ambitious goal, but I also believe Columbia is an ambitious town,” Bush said, while noting he awaits the report from The Energy Authority on what the city could do to achieve the 100% by 2030 goal.

Don Waterman, also running for the Fifth Ward council seat, wants to take a more measured approach with regard to the 100% renewable by 2030 push.

“I do support we do everything we can to curb emissions and do what we can for renewables, but to mandate, if you will, by 2030 is ambitious, but I am concerned at what cost that will have (for implementation),” he said. “… I want to be more moderate and careful as we move forward. I think there are some unintended consequences if we rush into this.”

Knoth wants the city’s climate goals to be a part of an everyday conversation and double-down on its goals, while recognizing some goals might not be met. It shouldn’t stop the city from trying, he said.

“It needs to become how we operate in every initiative. (CAAP) is too significant to not be incorporated into how we operate,” he said.

Candidates also discussed proposals for electric base rate change by the city council in work sessions.

Bush is concerned that a base rate change will impact low-income individuals hardest and highlighted a tiered system based on electric consumption that would incentivize usage reductions by customers. He also has a hope that renters, like homebuyers, would receive an energy efficiency report so they can make informed decisions on where they live and energy cost impacts.

Waterman approves of the rate changes as proposed by Columbia Water and Light and said there still could be more public information on energy conservation, agreeing with Bush about providing rental energy efficiency information.

The city’s system should remain progressive through the purpose of if you use more, you pay more, Knoth said.

When it comes to transit in the city, Waterman wants to review routes, with the possibility of smaller buses or more on-demand transport in the vein of ride-sharing. Bush wants to see investments into the city’s transit system as a matter of public safety, needing robust improvements, including in employee pay. Knoth also sees the city’s transit system as a way to lead to other city improvements.

Candidates also are in favor of zoning changes and other changes to city development codes to bring in more housing density, whether that is infill of empty lots or more cottage-style housing. Cottage housing generally has fewer bedrooms, such as two bedrooms instead of a standard minimum of of three for houses.

When it comes to trash, recycling and composting, Waterman would like to see more education on the options residents have.

For the city to reduce household waste and increase recycling, it has to be incentivized and those who fail, there could be penalties, Bush said.

“The city needs to partner with the private sector and other stakeholders to find the best way to reclaim waste,” he said, agreeing more public education is needed.

Knoth also focused on community engagement and education in his remarks and incentivizing recycling. City programs can be good, but if the public doesn’t know about them or how they work, then they can become seemingly nonexistent, he said.

Originally Appeared Here

The city of Columbia is planning to build a new bike park in the northeastern portion of the Columbia Cosmopolitan Recreation Area. On Jan. 17, City Council passed the ordinance allowing for the park’s construction.

According to Gabe Huffington, the city of Columbia’s director of Parks and Recreation, residents have begun contacting the parks and recreation facilities to discuss the development of a bike park. Its construction was approved by the City Council and the Parks and Recreation Committee after the project was discussed at a council meeting in January.

Among some of the possible services the park is expected to offer are a shelter, a parking space, an asphalt pump track, a bike playground, a mountain bike skills course, and a trailhead for Rhett Walters Memorial Mountain Bike Trail, also known as Rhett’s Run.

The Cosmo Bike Park’s development has already sparked the enthusiasm of many Columbia residents, specifically biking enthusiasts.

“I’m really excited. I enjoy having lots of trails around, and it’s a really great way to get people introduced to the sport without having to worry about safety,” Jackson Mitchell, a Walt’s Bike Shop employee, said.

Mike Burden, the team director of the Como Composite Raptors, a youth mountain bike team in Columbia, couldn’t contain his excitement when he found out about the construction of a new bike park.

“It’s pretty awesome,” Burden said. “There’s a lot of momentum right now, which is super exciting. The sport continues to grow in terms of the number of riders.” Burden believes that one of the primary purposes of the park is to introduce new people to biking.

The Cosmo Bike Park will cover roughly 26 acres and cost a total of $750,000. The top donors from the project include The Frank W. Morris Memorial Trust and the Veterans United Foundation.

In Columbia, a portion of the sales tax policy is allocated to parks and recreational facilities. The city will pay approximately $225,000 for the construction of the bike facility using money from the 2021 Park Sales Tax and more than $500,000 in donations.

Burden would later note that one of the key attractions and reasons people choose to stay in Columbia is the use of those funds to protect the vast amount of greenspace the city has, along with the work of the Parks and Recreation Department to preserve it.

“The citizens voice their opinion best about that policy, which is that they continue to vote for it,” said Burden. “I think that if you look at surveys of Columbia residents, their satisfaction with parks continues to rank really high.”

The expense of the facility, particularly the asphalt pump track, is one of the compromises that parks and recreation are still working through due to a number of factors like inflation, the cost of commodities, and the cost of contracting.

“The asphalt pump track is not something that our own construction crews within the parks department could complete, and so we will contract out the design and installation of the asphalt pump track,” said Gabe Huffington, the Director of Parks and Recreation for the city of Columbia. “Those have started to increase in cost, so our biggest consideration right now will be the cost of that feature compared to everything else.”

Although the bike park was sought by the public, the Columbia Board of Parks and Recreation is aware that not everyone will be in favor of it, particularly in terms of finances.

“There will be some folks who may not want something to be done in their neighborhood; they may want to see money spent this way; they may have specific ideas for what would be in a proposed park,” said Huffington. “The good news for our department is that we have a dedicated park sales tax”

Huffington says that sometimes people misunderstand how exactly the Parks and Recreation Department can use the money from the tax credit.

“They can’t be used to build roads, they can’t be used to build sewer systems, they can’t be used to fund police officers, these are dedicated funds set forth by the voters for capital projects and for parks and recreation purposes only,” Huffington said.

An obstacle still lies ahead in the path of Huffington and the future of the bike park. “Our biggest challenge to me is fitting everything within one location. The biggest challenge for any project is just making sure that you have all of the potential questions that you may be asked covered.”

Columbia residents can expect the park to be completed in the summer of 2024.

Originally Appeared Here

Often, some industries and institutions seem firmly planted in yesteryear. Many of us can appreciate tradition, like historic architecture, vintage clothing, or the feel of a paper magazine in one’s hands. But like downtown buildings, sometimes it’s historic and other times just old and run down.

There’s an old saying that necessity is the mother of invention. The recent pandemic upended a lot of stuff, and inspired many audibles to be called. Working from home became a necessity to keep up productivity when people couldn’t physically gather together. While some were scrambling, others had been doing remote work since before it became cool. Since workplaces reopened again, many employers, and employees, have rethought what collective workspaces they really need, or need to pay for.

Hybrid work has now set in as a more permanent fixture of modern work in many sectors. Gross generalizations are tough, as the tasks to be done and people doing them differ greatly.

A significant industry here in COMO is Education, a field ripe for innovative disruption.

COVID especially challenged K-12 schools which have an operational model dependent on gathering large numbers of students together in centralized facilities. Those institutions were simply not equipped to elegantly flip a switch to remote learning.

Some households really struggled. Some hunkered down and toughed it out, while other parents got creative, turning lemons into lemonade. Some grouped neighbor kids together into mini home classrooms or “pods.” Some discovered that they liked this better than “regular” school.

The standard classroom units of 20+ kids of similar age with desks facing a teacher or blackboard/screen is a model over a century old. Lectures manually repeated in each class session from an in-person instructor, then homework to figure out examples on your on.

A “flip classroom” however uses technology to turn this model on its head. World-class instructors can record their lectures regardless of their location, and kids watch that at home on their tablet whenever as “homework.” Then during the school day in the classroom collectively, the teacher instead helps with workbook exercises and guides lab experiments, maximizing personal interactions.

Medical innovation of interest is usually curing cancer, some surgical robot, or further mapping out the genetic code. But the delivery of health services is fertile ground, too. Telehealth is here to stay: to supplement, or somewhat replace, traditional doctor appointments or urgent care visits. Trained medical professionals to help triage flu-like symptoms, a skin ailment, or a baby’s persistent cough at 3AM are low hanging fruit for this technology.

Many corners of rural Missouri are considered health care deserts. While telehealth can help, in-person providers are still often necessary.

Nurse practitioners are highly skilled and licensed medical professionals who can address many day-to-day health needs. Old rules might require them to stay on a leash within x miles of a sponsoring MD. This is a matter of life and death for thousands of Missourians, so maybe underserved areas could be declared medical disaster zones, opening up opportunities for more entrepreneurial nurses.

Maybe one contract they score is being the on-call school nurse for a small school district. Maybe they would be allowed to convert a spare classroom into an urgent care clinic, one door into the school hallway, the other facing out to a half empty parking lot to welcome the public.

The US Postal Service is slowly going broke. While more postal locations near COMO are needed to serve the well over 100,000 residents here, some small villages with 200 people still have their own dedicated legacy postal shack, and often a designated postmaster.

At the Boone County Historical Society, there is a blast from the past which should be reimplemented today. An old dry goods general store displays everything from flour to overalls, buckets to oil lamps. And in the corner is a block of a few dozen post office boxes where locals got their mail. The same clerk that sold nails and Easter bonnets could shift over and sell stamps, too.

A lot of small towns don’t have a full service grocer but they might have a Casey’s General Store, Break Time, etc. Let them bid on having a post office counter, too. These would serve a lot of people better and save a lot of money.

One market that is blooming is legalized cannabis (the historic name for marijuana). With medicinal sales opening up a few years ago, such specialty retailers (called dispensaries) popped up all around town. Now, jokes aside, recreational (aka “adult use”) is expected to roll out in a big way.

And we are seeing the integration of this newly legalized industry go mainstream. Operators are renting commercial retail space and competing with other area businesses for employees. Sales associates known as “budtenders,” along with business managers, logistics professionals, security guards for all that cash on hand and compliance officers to navigate complex regulations.

Look for businesses in this industry to further integrate with our local business community, as they join the Chamber of Commerce, and reporters write up front page company profile features.

In other states, based on what is allowed there, some cannabis retailers innovate by adding on a lounge for customers to sample products onsite, or just hangout. Think what Logboat Brewing Company has done with its attached bar, plus recreation space, which it keeps expanding as more customers continue to flock there.

Whether a public or private organization, new or old, there’s always room for improvement.

Originally Appeared Here