Despite city budget cuts, Main Street ‘yellow shirts’ back working Sunday nights
Sunday nights on Columbia’s Main Street are a bit yellower once again.
The City Center Partnership, the association that advocates for property owners in the Capital City ‘s resurgent Main Street District, recently reinstated Sunday evening shifts for its team of clean-and-safe ambassadors, commonly referred to as the “yellow shirt” program. Sunday night shifts for the yellow shirts had been suspended since the summer after City Center Partnership’s funding from the City of Columbia was sliced amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Matt Kennell, City Center Partnership’s CEO, said with the budget cuts, the organization had not been staffing the Main Street District with yellow shirt personnel on Sunday nights because that is typically a slower time. However, after recently getting inquiries from some of the district’s property owners, the decision was made to begin staffing Sunday nights once again.
“I know from being in this job for almost 20 years that, almost immediately when the time changes, people get nervous downtown when it gets dark earlier,” Kennell said. “When it stays light until 9 o’clock we don’t get complaints about hardly anything. But when it starts getting dark earlier, people start looking for more services. ... So, we reacted as soon as we got a couple concerns about it.
“We feel like, six months into (the budget year), with all the other cuts we’ve made, we could add that shift back on Sunday evenings.”
The downtown clean-and-safe crew is now working from 7:30 a.m. to 11:30 p.m daily.
The yellow shirt personnel provide a visible presence on Main Street and perform a number of functions, from keeping the sidewalks clean to helping citizens with information and directions to providing a conduit with public safety agencies when incidents occur. The sight of the yellow-clad workers has become a constant in the last decade-plus as Main Street has been revitalized with a host of restaurants, bars and entertainment venues, as well as streetscaping and infrastructure upgrades.
“They are our ambassadors,” Kennell said of the yellow shirts. “They are our eyes and ears on the street. They are trained and do homeless outreach. They often react to situations before the police get involved. If someone is being disruptive on the street, they’ll come up and try to calm the situation. ... We clean. We pick leaves up. We’ve changed tires and jumped dead batteries. Really whatever it takes to make coming downtown a positive experience.”
City Center Partnership’s city funding for the current budget year was cut significantly compared to the prior year. Last year, the downtown advocacy group got about $330,000 in total funds from the city. This year, that number was trimmed to $150,000, with that money coming from the city’s economic development fund, per city budget director Missy Caughman.
Last budget year, City Center Partnership received just short of $260,000 in hospitality tax dollars, which are collected on the sale of prepared food and beverages in Columbia. This year, the partnership didn’t receive any H-tax money.
Kennell said CCP has “cut the budget to the bone.” It has eliminated an office staff position, and it has frozen two open positions on the yellow shirt team. There are typically 12 yellow shirts on the CCP payroll, but there are currently 10. The partnership also has suspended its shuttle service in the Main Street District, though Kennell noted that is mostly for social distancing reasons amid the global pandemic.
While Kennell is hopeful to see at least some of CCP’s H-tax funding restored next budget year, at least one Columbia City Council member doesn’t seem keen on it.
Second-term at-large Councilman Howard Duvall points out that the Main Street District is part of a business improvement district (BID) funding program — in which property owners in the district pay a fee — through which it receives about $1 million per year.
“My thought is that they should not participate in the hospitality tax,” Duvall said. “They are double-dipping by getting a dedicated million dollars (through the BID) and then coming back and saying they need to be treated like all the other agencies. They are not like all the other agencies. They have a dedicated revenue source.”
Kennell was quick to note that the Main Street District, with its many restaurants, lounges, bars and coffee shops, helps the city generate H-tax funds.
“We are not second guessing (council’s) decisions,” Kennell said. “We are just hopeful that, in the future, we’ll be able to get some of that hospitality tax back. A lot of that hospitality tax is produced in our district.”
Though he takes issue with funding sources, Duvall noted he supports the yellow shirt program.
“They have done well,” the councilman said. “They keep a presence in the Main Street District that shows people they can get help when they need it. It provides a level of safety. It doesn’t substitute for the Columbia Police Department, but it does provide another set of eyes and assistance with small problems.”
This story was originally published December 30, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
