Columbia City Council doesn’t call it a Bribery Fund, of course, but the city’s Economic Development Contingency Account is supposed to be used chiefly to lure businesses into the city. All $700,000 of the fund has been spent. $1,600 of it has been earmarked to buy hockey tickets for city employees, a brazen method of spending taxpayer dollars to support hockey. The city’s principal big spender, Mayor Coble, admits the hockey ticket money should have come from a different account. (Perhaps the one paying for all the holiday turkeys and groceries for city employees?)  

Where did the $700,000 come from in the first place? It’s surplus money from the Water/ Sewer Department. The way the system works is the city charges higher rates than necessary to provide for the maintenance and expansion of the system plus provide a SURPLUS that goes into the General Fund to cover expenditures that might annoy taxpayers if their property taxes were raised for the purpose. The fund is slightly lower this year because the city had to actually spend some additional water/sewer revenue to make improvements to the city’s water and sewer systems.

City leaders pledge to examine the way the fund is spent so that more of it can be used to lure business to Columbia instead of funneling it into the hands of city employees who might otherwise not go anywhere near a hockey game. Hockey is not one of the hot spectator sports in Columbia, despite its continual subsidy by taxpayers. 

And while City Council was shoveling tax dollars out the door of City Hall, it tossed in another $1.5 million for a new hotel in the Vista. The hotel will cost some $32 million to build, although private developer Bo Aughtry said in the summer of 2004 that it would cost $25 million and would not require taxpayer money. With the additional $1.5 million, Columbians now have $4.5 million in the edifice and the groundbreaking hasn’t taken place, yet. Taxpayers will also cough up about $12 million for a parking facility.  

P.S. Hizzoner the Mayor says the hotel money is coming from the sale of the old state prison property. No one is mentioning the bundle the city lost in its development efforts in that area.