Columbia’s meal-tax money shifted by taking $386,000 from a citizen’s committee

Columbia City Council on Tuesday dipped into the city’s meal-tax revenue and committed to give $623,000 to a score of groups and events and pledged $1.25 million for expansions to two downtown museums.

Council authorized the money in next fiscal year’s budget by taking $386,500 away from a a council-appointed citizen’s committee that every year scrutinizes competing requests. The panel normally makes recommendations on one-third of the $10.8 million Columbia is projected to receive from the 2-percent tax paid largely by patrons of restaurants and bars. Council allocates the rest.

When the committee meets Friday to make is final 2016-2017 recommendations to council for allocations to some 78 organizations and events that rely on the funding, the panel will have to cut its pot by nearly $387,000.

Committee chairman John Whitehead pleaded to council that it not cut its funding and noted the panel has received 10 new applications for money for the upcoming year in addition to returning applicants. Those 10 applications alone total some $650,000, committee staffer Libby Gober said.

Mayor Steve Benjamin made the recommendations for council to shift the meal-tax money around, and five other council members voted for the changes. Councilwoman Leona Plaugh attended the meeting by Skype while under going medical treatment in Houston. She sought to delay the vote, but council rules bar absentee members from voting.

The net effect of the shifting dollars means the committee has about $92,000 that has not been allocated, most of it ($83,800) from money that was to go to the arts advocacy groups OneColumbia. That amount was revoked because it was improperly spent under state law.

Council did not decide on a $60,250 request from the North Columbia Business Association to create a brand identity for that part of town that feels it’s often left behind.

Councilwoman Tameika Isaac Devine warned council about using meal-tax money to help market one part of the city. “That’s a controversial one that will start the ball rolling for other areas (to ask for marketing money),” she said.

The hospitality tax money, by law, must go to efforts that attract tourism.

Benjamin said he viewed the money for the Columbia Museum of Art as an investment in a city-owned building and in one of the city’s best-known attractions, the EdVenture children’s museum.

At one point during the afternoon work session during which the new allocations were discussed, the horsetrading about who would get the money left the body without a quorum. That prompted Benjamin to quip, “Are they out there (in the hallway) lobbying each other?”

After the money-shifting discussion, Councilman Ed McDowell asked out loud about its net effect on meal-tax revenue. “Where does that leave us?” the newly elected councilman said.

“In the hole,” Councilman Moe Baddourah responded. Yet he, along with other council members present, voted for the changes.

This story was originally published May 17, 2016 at 10:20 PM with the headline "Columbia’s meal-tax money shifted by taking $386,000 from a citizen’s committee."