CoMoBUZ Insider Briefing, May 8, 2026

Mike's quick, weekly no-nonsense look at civic affairs in Columbia and Boone County, Missouri. This week, Mike explains the Columbia city council’s two-week delay on a vote to place a sales tax increase on the August ballot; has an update on Boone Health’s new cardiology clinic, has the latest details on Columbia Public Schools’ lawsuit over Boone County charter schools, explains the city council’s unusual procedure for setting a public hearing on binding arbitration for employees, and introduces The Retreat at Columbia, a new 194-unit multi-family development moving through city hall.

Transcript

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The City of Columbia and Boone County are now staring at the same voters, the same wallets, and the same problem. But voters may not hear two carefully separated proposals. They may hear just one message government wants more sales tax, and that is the collision now facing the city and the county. From ComoBuz.com, this is the Como Buzz Insider Briefing, a weekly look at the decisions, documents, and debates shaping Columbia and Boone County. I'm Mike Murphy. This week, the top story has been the public safety sales tax collision between the City of Columbia and Boone County. The city is weighing a one cent sales tax for police and fire. The county is considering a major increase in its law enforcement sales tax to deal with jail and public safety costs. Also this week, Boone Health opens its new cardiology clinic after the breakup with Missouri Heart Center. The Missouri Attorney General moves to narrow Columbia Public Schools charter school lawsuit. And in the receipts, a late-night council vote pushes binding arbitration for city workers into public view. Let's start with the tax question. The City of Columbia and Boone County are now confronting the same political problem from opposite sides of the same tax base. Columbia wants voters to approve a one cent sales tax for police and fire services. Boone County officials are considering asking voters to raise the county's already existing one-eighth cent law enforcement sales tax by another three-eighths of a cent. That would bring the dedicated county law enforcement tax to an even one-half cent. County commissioners have not officially placed anything on the ballot. They have not taken a final vote on the size of any increase. But Boone County Sheriff Dwayne Carey is now making the case for a larger jail, and Boone County Auditor Kyle Riemann is warning that the city and county should not treat their proposals as unrelated. That warning landed Monday night. At Riemann's urging, the Columbia City Council voted four to three to delay a final decision on whether to put the city's proposed one cent public safety sales tax on the August 4th ballot. The delay gives city and county leaders a short window. They can coordinate their approach, or they can move forward separately and ask many of the same residents to approve overlapping sales tax increases. That's the heart of the issue. It's not whether Columbia has public safety needs, it does. And it's not whether Boone County has public safety needs, it does. The issue is whether voters will see a coordinated local plan or a pile-up of government requests arriving at the same time. The city's proposal is big. Columbia is considering a full one cent sales tax expected to raise about $38 million a year. The money would go into a dedicated public safety fund. City staff have tied the money to police and fire staffing, equipment, benefits, facilities, and pensions. The city has identified needs that include 50 police officers and 42 firefighters. It also points to police facility needs, vehicles and equipment, two future fire stations, renovations to existing fire stations, and pension obligations for police and fire. The county's pressure is different. Boone County already has a dedicated law enforcement sales tax. Voters approved it in 2002. It's one-eighth of a cent. It brought in $5.76 million in fiscal 2025. But county public safety spending has grown well beyond that dedicated revenue. Reman says Boone County spent just under $31 million on public safety in 2025. He says public safety expenditures have grown at an average of more than 8% over the last five years. He says the county's general fund has been absorbing another $2 million to $3 million in public safety costs each year. That matters because county public safety is not just the sheriff's office. It includes jail operations, out-of-county inmate housing, juvenile services, the prosecuting attorney, courts, and other related expenses. And there's one piece Reman is emphasizing. Boone County cannot simply decide that jail costs are too high and walk away. When jail costs rise, those dollars have to come from somewhere. If dedicated law enforcement tax revenue does not keep pace, the county's general fund fills the gap. That means jail and detention costs squeeze other county services that are not legally required in the same way. So the cost is rising. It could ask voters to increase the existing one-eighth cent law enforcement sales tax by another three-eighths of a cent. That would bring the county's dedicated law enforcement sales tax to one-half cent. That is where the collision with Columbia becomes obvious. If Columbia proceeds with its full one cent request and Boone County later seeks the 3.8 cent increase now under discussion, Columbia residents would face a combined local sales tax increase of 1.375 cents. And that would be only the local picture. Governor Mike Kehoe has until May 22nd to decide whether a statewide proposal to phase out Missouri's individual income tax and replace it through expanded and increased sales and use taxes will go before voters in August or November. That means city, county, and state leaders could all be asking voters in the same election cycle, perhaps on the same ballot, to accept a greater reliance on sales taxes. For taxpayers, this is not an abstract government chart. People do not experience taxes by jurisdiction, they experience them at the checkout counter. They see the final total. That is why Riemann's warning matters. He's not saying the city has no needs. He's not saying the county has no needs. He's saying affordability and public trust have to be part of the discussion. And he's saying the city and county should not send voters mixed messages. A coordinated approach would require compromise. One possible path would be for Columbia to reduce its request. The city could step down from a full cent to say three-quarters of a cent. The county could narrow its own request. Instead of asking for three-eighths of a cent, it could seek a quarter cent increase. Together, that would produce a combined one cent local public safety increase for Columbia residents. That would not give either government everything it wants. The city would have to scale back its plan or stretch the timeline for hiring facilities and equipment. The county would have to decide whether a smaller increase can support the jail and public safety obligations it says are urgent. But it would give voters a cleaner message. The city could say this portion is for police and fire. The county could say this portion is for jail, detention, courts, and countywide public safety obligations. Together, they could explain the total cost. They could acknowledge that public safety does not stop at jurisdictional boundaries. Unfortunately, the argument against coordination is strong. The city has already built its public safety plan around a full one cent tax. City officials have attached real staffing and facility needs to the $38 million annual estimate. Reducing the tax would mean making choices, fewer hires, slower implementation, delayed capital projects, or some mix of cuts and timing changes. Then the county would have its own pressure. Kerry says the jail issue is urgent. Out-of-county housing is expensive. Transportation is burdensome. The current system does not create lasting capacity. A smaller county tax might be more practical politically, but it may not support the facility scale the sheriff believes is necessary for the next 25 to 30 years. There's also a messaging problem. Kerry is talking about a jail. Columbia is talking about police and fire. State leaders are talking about replacing income tax revenue with higher sales and use taxes. Those messages can coexist in policy memos, but they may not survive an election campaign. The danger is that voters hear all of this as one thing more sales tax, more government revenue, and more pressure on household budgets. That does not mean voters will reject the proposals. Public safety has real political power. Police, fire, jail safety, and court obligations are not fringe concerns. But timing matters, trust matters, clarity matters. The city council's delay was narrow. It was two weeks. It did not kill the city tax proposal, it did not rewrite the amount, it did not force the county to act, but it created a small opening. City and county officials can now decide whether they want to talk to each other before they talk to voters. They can decide whether the public safety issue should be presented as a shared local problem with different pieces or as separate campaigns that compete for the same taxpayer patients. That decision may matter almost as much as the tax rates themselves. Because this debate is not about whether Columbia needs more police officers or whether Boone County needs a new jail. It's about whether local governments can make a disciplined case for public safety at a moment when voters are already skeptical, prices are already high, and the state may be heading into its own sales tax debate. The next key date is May 18th when Columbia's delayed decision comes back before the council. By then the questions will be sharper. Will Columbia press ahead with its own full one cent public sales tax? Will Boone County signal a competing or coordinating proposal? And will voters be asked to judge one plan or sort through several? For now, the city and county have the same problem. They need money for public safety, but they also need the public to believe they have thought through the total bill. You are listening to the Como Buzz Insider Briefing from Como Buzz.com. Now to the briefing board, two other developments shaping the week in Columbia and Boone County. First, Boone Health says its new cardiology clinic is now open. That's a major update in the hospital's breakup with Missouri Heart Center, and it gives patients their clearest look so far at what Boone's rebuild cardiology service will look like. Boone Health says three positions from the former Missouri Heart Group will remain with Boone. They're Dr. Jerry Kennett, Dr. John Boyer, and Dr. Charles Tillman. Kennett is one of the central figures in the larger story. He's both a founding cardiologist of Missouri Heart Center and chairman of the Boone Health Board of Trustees. Boone Health also says four advanced practice nurses who previously worked with Missouri Heart Group will join the new clinic. The hospital says two outside cardiologists have also accepted offers and are expected to join the staff in the coming weeks. But there's another detail that tells the larger story. Boone Health spokesman Christian Basy said the hospital will employ twelve locums while it builds its permanent staff. Locums is short for locum tenants. In plain English, these are temporary doctors brought in to fill coverage gaps. That means Boone Health can say the clinic is open and patients will continue to be seen. It also means much of the cardiology service line will be being rebuilt in real time. For patients, Boone says appointments will continue at the same locations, including the Columbia office on East Broadway and sites in Mexico, Macon, and Moberly. The hospital says patients with upcoming appointments will receive a call or email to confirm or reschedule. Some patients may be assigned to different providers because not all Missouri Heart physicians move to Boone. The public message from Boone is stability. The underlying reality is transition. Boone has a clinic, some familiar physicians, and new hires in the pipeline, but the reliance on temporary cardiologists shows how difficult it is to rebuild a specialty service after a major physician group split. That is the issue to watch. Not just whether the doctors are open now, but whether Boone can turn a temporary bridge into a stable permanent cardiology program. Second on the briefing board, Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway is asking a Cole County judge to dismiss most of Columbia Public Schools' lawsuit, challenging the state law that opened Boone County to new charter schools. The hearing is scheduled for 11 a.m. Monday before Associate Circuit Judge Emily Fretwell in Cole County Circuit Court. Columbia Public Schools filed its amended lawsuit April 24th. The district is challenging a provision of Senate Bill 727. That provision allows charter schools to operate in school districts located in a county with more than 150,000, but fewer than 200,000. The plaintiffs argue that population bracket was written to apply only to Boone County. The lawsuit became more immediate this spring after the Missouri State Board of Education voted April 14th to approve Frontier School's application to open a charter school in Columbia for the 2027-28 school year. The Attorney General's filing does not argue the merits of charter schools as policy. It argues the lawsuit should be narrowed. In basic terms, the state is asking the judge to trim the case down to one main question: whether the State Board of Education acted lawfully when it approved Frontier's application. If the judge agrees, the broader constitutional attack on the Boone County Charter Provision would be pushed out of this lawsuit as separate claims. The State of Missouri and the Attorney General would largely be removed from the case, and the State Board of Education would remain the main defendant. For CPS and the other plaintiffs, the core argument remains that lawmakers used a population bracket to create a Boone County only charter school path, and that the state board relied on that provision when it approved Frontier. Monday's hearing will not necessarily decide the whole charter school fight, but it could decide how wide the fight remains. If the judge grants the state's motion, the case becomes narrower and more focused on the board's approval of Frontier. If the judge denies it, the broader constitutional challenge stays alive in its current form. Either way, the case is now moving quickly from political dispute to courtroom procedure. And for Columbia families, the practical question remains the same. Will Frontier's planned charter school for 2027 move forward? Or will the courts slow or block the first school approved under the Boone County provision? Now the receipts. This week's document trail comes from the end of Monday night's Columbia City Council meeting. The headline is simple. Late at night, after nearly five hours of city business, the council voted four to three to move forward with a public hearing on binding arbitration for city employees. The vote did not adopt binding arbitration. It did not approve any ordinance, but it did put a major labor issue into the public process. And the way it happened matters. The motion came during council members' comments near the end of the meeting. The council had already dealt with major debates over the proposed public safety sales tax and the city's definition of family in its housing code. Councilmember Vera Elwood made the motion. Her argument was that binding arbitration has been discussed for years during city election cycles, but mostly outside public view. Elwood said she had worked with local labor unions and workers' organizations on proposed language drafted by an attorney. She said the proposal would amend Chapter 19 of the city code and was based on ordinances used in other municipalities. Binding arbitration is a labor dispute process. When a dispute cannot be resolved, it goes to a neutral arbitrator. The arbitrator's decision is final and enforceable. That's why labor organizations care about it. Columbia employee groups have been pushing for grievance reform and binding arbitration in their collective bargaining agreements. The current system leaves personnel disputes ultimately in the hands of Columbia's city manager. Bargaining groups want the option of a binding outside arbitrator when they believe the city manager is not a neutral decision maker. The city administration and legal department have opposed adding binding arbitration to collective bargaining agreements. So this is not a small procedural issue. It goes directly to power inside city government. Who gets the final say when a city worker contests discipline or a grievance? City management or an outside arbitrator? Elwood said she was not asking the council to approve the ordinance that night. She said she was asking for a public hearing so the conversation could move out into the open. Councilmember Valerie Carroll supported sending the issue for a hearing for more discussion. But Mayor Barbara Buffalo objected to the process. The binding arbitration issue was not listed as a regular agenda item. It came up during general council comments and after council had already moved two reports to the May 18th meeting because of the late hour. Just before Elwood's motion, Buffalo had urged council members not to raise matters that did not need to be handled that night. When Elwood distributed the proposed language, Buffalo said she was seeing it for the first time. Her objection was not necessarily to a public hearing at some later point. Her objection was to acting on ordinance language that had just been handed out around 1140 at night. That is the process issue. Elwood framed the motion as transparency, bringing a long-running labor discussion into the public eye. The mayor framed the timing as a surprise at the dais late at night without time for review. Both points can be true. It is legitimate for employee groups and council members to want a public hearing on a labor issue that has been circulating in campaigns and private conversations. It's also legitimate to question whether major ordinance language should appear for the first time near midnight under council comments. The vote was four to three. Carol, Elwood, Jackie Sample, and Christina Hartman voted yes. Betsy Peters, Nick Foster, and Buffalo voted no. Again, the council did not adopt binding arbitration. It ordered a public hearing. That hearing will force the next set of questions into the open. Which employees would binding arbitration cover? How would arbitrators be selected? What types of disputes would qualify? What limits would be placed on arbitrators' authority? How would binding arbitration affect city government, employee discipline, labor negotiations, and the budget? Those are not small questions. They matter at any time. They matter even more now because staffing, pay, retention, police and fire needs, union relations, and public safety tax are all part of the same broader city discussion. That is the receipt. The council did not settle the labor fight, but with one late night motion it changed where the fight will happen next, not only in bargaining sessions, not only in campaign conversations, but at a public hearing with council members, city staff, employee groups, and residents all on the record. Coming up, we'll be watching The Retreat at Columbia. That's a proposed 194-unit multifamily development off Rock Coi Road in South Columbia. The project won unanimous approval from the Planning and Zoning Commission Thursday night and now heads to the City Council. The proposal would rezone about 32.7 acres of vacant land north of the grindstone Walmart from agricultural zoning to planned development. The project includes a mix of one, two, three, and four bedroom apartments. The plan allows for a final total of up to 204 units. The key issues ahead are familiar ones for South Columbia growth: traffic, street connections, rock quarry road, utilities, environmental features, and whether the city is comfortable adding another large multifamily project in a Tier 1 growth area where infrastructure is already nearby. The plan includes future street connections involving. Between Grindstone Plaza Drive, a new retreat way, and Rockwari Road. City staff say the traffic study did not identify necessary off-site public road improvements. The City Council gets the next call. That is the week, and the central question is bigger than any one vote. Can local government make a clear case for what it needs before it asks the public for more money, more trust, and more patience? That question is now in front of Columbia and Boone County on public safety. It's in front of Boone Health as it rebuilds cardiology after the Missouri Heart split. It's in front of Columbia Public Schools and the state as the charter school fight moves through court. And it's in front of the City Council as binding arbitration moves from private labor politics towards a public hearing. These are not abstract process stories. They're about who pays, who decides, who's accountable, and what happens when institutions wait until pressure leaves them few easy choices. We'll keep following all of it at Comobuz.com. For Como Buzz.com, I'm Mike Murphy. Thanks for listening. I'll see you next week.