From the Roundtable: Who are the ideal candidates from a business perspective?
Although I back away from specific endorsements, I hope members of the business community take the time to fully evaluate each candidate and consider the city’s best interests as we approach this critical crossroads of municipal governance.
Cherished above all are the qualities of honesty, transparency, the ability to handle budgeting and fiscal matters and superior communications skills. A good candidate also must have a wide range of interests and the rare ability to comprehend and oversee Columbia as a municipal corporation operating as a “full-service” city.
The ideal elected official must remain completely divorced from and independent of both special interest groups and potentially toxic “power” brokers.
An ideal candidate for office in Columbia would strongly support the socially responsible system of capitalism. This includes fostering complete cooperation between the private and public sectors and providing all services including police, fire, water, electricity, public works, parks and recreation.
The ideal candidate would be environmentally concerned and support various social programs. The ideal candidate would eschew potentially destructive behavior — de-emphasizing parks for example — because it turned out they were beholden to or supported by a particular special interest group.
Those of us in business value predictable stability as we plan and operate our enterprises. One undesirable, destabilizing undercurrent buzzing about is maliciously meddling in how Columbia is governed and managed. With an occasional tweak or two since the early 1950s, Columbia’s City Charter has specified the council-manager form of governance. Most of us would agree this has worked rather well. In my view, business people would wholeheartedly appreciate having the present system continue, unmolested, with no surprises.
The same applies for Bill Watkins, the city’s professional city manager. As the chief executive of The City of Columbia Inc., Watkins has been contracted to work at the pleasure of the seven elected members of the board of directors we call the City Council. Business people strongly appreciate the stable working relationship that exists between Watkins and the City Council. Potentially malicious rhetoric that questions continuance of the existing council-manager system as whispered within the candidate field should be reason enough for the business community to deny anyone holding such views any form of its support.
Crime is a major pole of election activity as a mugging in a parking garage captured on video and a debate over downtown security cameras metamorphosed into Proposition One. For marketing purposes alone, Columbia must demonstrate to the world that it is a safe city. Although statistics indicate criminal activity is relatively stable given our growth, the popular perception appears to be au contraire. In my view, one culprit is that we now see what the alleged perpetrators look like. One used to have to visit the post office to gaze at bad guy mug shots; now their faces are splashed across the newspaper or posted on the Web or TV.
Jobs and business development is another stirred-up center of candidate attention. Some omissions are baffling. Why do candidates ignore the University of Missouri, its hospital and clinics as the largest engine of economic development? Also largely unspoken is any concern about the retention and possible enlargement of existing entities such as Kraft Foods of Columbia.
Equally troubling is only veiled support to facilitate and streamline business interaction with various city departments. The people who do business here, or want to do business here, would love to supplant the present unpredictably vague manner of dealing with city departments with one-stop certainty. That would demonstrate that this is a city that really wants to go all out for business.
And watch out for an April surprise. Several outside concerns are seriously considering Columbia as a place to move to. An announcement of jobs coming to the city could have an impact on the outcome of one or more of these hotly contested mayoral and City Council elections.