Columbia’s city council will get its first look at city manager De’Carlon Seewood’s proposed $558-million budget Monday afternoon.
The council plans a 2:30 work session at city hall. Mr. Seewood unveiled his proposed budget on Thursday and it includes a pay increase for Columbia’s approximately 1,500 city employees. Mr. Seewood tells reporters that city employee recruitment and retention remains his top priority.
“We are a service agency, and so we put people into vehicles or into offices to provide a service for our residents. If we don’t have those people, we can’t provide that service. And so, when we saw that our ability to hire and retain was slowly slipping away, I mean the first thing we did is we had to look at our pay,” Mr. Seewood says.
Mr. Seewood tells 939 the Eagle that while the proposed pay raise varies, it averages about 3.5 percent.
He also says a city with reliable infrastructure is critical for a thriving community. Infrastructure is a key theme in Mr. Seewood’s proposed $558-million budget:
“At last (Columbia’s) city council meeting, the city held a public hearing for capital improvement projects. I believe in fiscal year ’25, we’re proposing a budget of $46-million for approximately 80 proposed capital improvement projects,” Mr. Seewood says.
Mr. Seewood’s proposed budget includes $500,000 to replace an MKT trail bridge and about $4.5 million for the large Forum Boulevard project. Construction of the Forum Boulevard project is scheduled to begin in 2026. The project will make numerous improvements on Forum between Chapel Hill and Woodrail Avenue, near Walgreens.
Your water bill in Columbia would also increase, under Mr. Seewood’s proposed budget. City finance director Matthew Lue tells reporters that water bills for residents and businesses will increase by about four percent in October, if Columbia’s city council approves Mr. Seewood’s plan:
“For fiscal year ’25, we’re looking at doing a water utility rate increase for residential and commercial customers. And this is for the utility to be able to maintain current services and meet our debt requirements,” says Mr. Lue.
The city council will hold a work session Monday at 2:30 at city hall to discuss Mr. Seewood’s proposed budget, and that is open to the public. The city council plans three public hearings where you can testify about Mr. Seewood’s proposed budget: August 5, August 19 and September 3. The council is set to vote on the budget on September 16.