‘Let’s be thoughtful’: Columbia Council weighs meeting in-person after year of virtual
Columbia City Council has been holding meetings virtually for one year amid the coronavirus pandemic.
But it now appears the Council is inching toward a possible return to in-person gatherings, though likely not initially at City Hall on Main Street.
While Council hasn’t set a date for a return to in-person meetings, third-term Mayor Steve Benjamin nodded toward the possibility during a Tuesday virtual gathering.
“There have been some discussions internally about how we can move things as a city, the city operations at-large and when and if the appropriate time may come for us to start meeting again (in-person) sometime soon,” Benjamin said. “I know (City Manager Teresa Wilson) has been very clear that, if we do, it does not need to be at City Hall, it needs to be at Busby Street or somewhere else along those lines.”
The mayor was referring to the city’s Busby Street Community Center, a facility in the Farrow Road area that opened in 2018 and has large spaces where Council could gather with social distancing in mind.
District 4 City Councilman Daniel Rickenmann, one of several mayoral candidates this year, said he would be in favor of returning to face-to-face meetings sooner rather than later, with safety precautions in place. He also floated an idea for another facility that could serve as a meeting spot.
“I think clearly we are in a position to get back together,” Rickenmann said. “I think Busby Street is probably a great alternative. The (Columbia Metropolitan) Convention Center is, too, because obviously there aren’t a lot of conventions going on right now.”
There was one particular driver behind Rickenmann’s thoughts of an in-person return: The city’s budget debates in the next few months. The budget has to be passed by the end of June, and talks will be crucial given the nature of the pandemic, though city budget officials have told Council that staff’s proposed budget could be very similar to the current budget year.
“We are going into the budget season and I think we would do ourselves a great disservice if we weren’t in the same room,” Rickenmann said. “Based on recent events and everything else, we all are comfortable enough to do that with social distancing. I’d like to put that on the calendar and get a date and really focus toward being able to do budget together with our staff.”
For a year, Columbia has been perhaps the most vigilant city in the state in regard to COVID-19 protocols. It suspended in-person council meetings and shuttered lobbies at city office buildings a year ago. Last spring it put in a stay-at-home order before the state eventually — briefly — enacted a similar measure. Columbia was among the first cities in the state to put in a mask ordinance, and later beefed-up the fine for violations from $25 to $100, and has handed out hundreds of tickets. Organized social events on city property have been extremely limited.
But now the capital city seems to be dipping its toe into the pool of a return to normalcy.
While Council extended the mask ordinance into May during Tuesday’s meeting, it left open the possibility that it could revisit the measure before then if case numbers continue to trend downward in SC. It also approved beer and wine permits for six popular spring events on city property, including the 1,000-person Gervais Street Bridge Dinner.
And the city announced Thursday that the community centers and buildings in city parks will reopen on May 3.
All of it comes as new COVID-19 case numbers, hospitalizations and deaths have eased in the Palmetto State in the last month. The state Department of Environmental Control reported than more than 1.5 million doses of COVID-19 have been administered in South Carolina.
“We’ve been, I think, very encouraged with the data trends and the deceleration in the number of infections,” Benjamin said. “And hopefully we will watch those numbers continue to tick down.”
Benjamin pointed out there have been a number of vaccination efforts, from various sectors, in recent weeks.
Aside from vaccinations connected to health systems and pharmacies, some churches also have gotten involved in vaccination sites. On Friday, Columbia’s Reid Chapel AME Church will host a vaccination event in connection with Walgreens, featuring the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine. Information about that event can be found at http://ame7.church/covid19.
