A suggestion: city should pay more attention to basic services

Plenty of us have been having our “fun” now that the city of Columbia has begun talking about putting a roof of grass on the City Hall annex that will rise one of these days east of the present digs. The idea of a grass roof was first brought up last year, and it may end up being a good idea after we’ve weighed long-term benefits against the somewhat accelerated initial expenses.

City officials deserve a pat on the back from us for being forward and upright about this grass-roof idea. Perhaps they learned a lesson or two from the debacle involving the remodeling of the Daniel Boone Regional Library building several years ago. Maybe there’ll even be some energy saved in long run.

While we’ve been having a laugh or two, at the same time I’ve been hearing more than a little mumbling about a city that may be losing its way when it comes to the basics any city government should be paying attention to.

The basics I’m referring are matters of maintaining good housekeeping when it comes to the fundamental services the city originally was incorporated to provide.

Ranked in no particular order because every one of them is important, Columbia’s basic good housekeeping services include: police and fire protection; public works, including street construction and maintenance; and the symphony of city-owned utilities that supply us with water, electric power, sewers and trash removal.

While I’m generally satisfied with the way Columbia is conducted, and a survey taken earlier this year overwhelmingly echoed this sentiment among those polled, I worry that the city may one of these days start losing its way when it comes to the basics that brought us together in the first place.

We rarely appreciate our rainbow of city services, while we only meekly thank those who toil on a 24/7 basis in our behalf. Our city utilities largely are taken for granted while the agencies that patrol our neighborhoods, extinguish fires and set about doing the other housekeeping tasks we have come to expect may go equally unheralded.

We should remind ourselves while continuing to wonder about—and, indeed, challenge city officials about—the adequacy and necessary improvement of these basic services. Part of the good housekeeping process should be expanded to include the little things that nag and annoy us that the city doesn’t seem to be very concerned about. Every one of them detracts from whatever good feelings we might have about Columbia as a whole. For a starter, I’m talking about street issues ranging from bumps and rough pavement to the pesky little matter of keeping lane-dividing lines visible.

Let’s zero in on complaints about the little bumps and grinds that punctuate the streets of our city at what seem to be increasingly annoying intervals. For years, it seems, there has been a rather jarring bump in the northbound lane of West Boulevard several hundred feet north of Broadway. Does the city know about it?

Surely it does. But does this bother anyone else who uses the boulevard? If you’re among the annoyed, wouldn’t you feel just a little a bit better about Columbia if your city just marshaled its forces and made this little annoyance go away?

Maybe we should all start writing down those pesky little matters that annoy and torment us. Then complain about it to the city. But how?

This leads me to the idea of adding an easy-to-use suggestion box on the city’s GoColumbiaMo.com Web site. While the site has been redesigned and may be easier to use, I’d go radical here and unfurl a big box in midst of the home page and call it the City of Columbia Official Suggestion Box. Of course it would be subject to abuse—what on the Internet hasn’t been—but now users would be just a couple of clicks away from telling municipal officials about all the pesky little things that annoy us.

Wouldn’t we all feel just a little bit better about the city we live in if someone would make these little annoyances go away?