The Columbia Heart Beat

Eating out just got more expensive

COLUMBIA, Mo  8/22/17 (Beat Byte) -- Columbia city manager Mike Matthes   plans such a dizzying array of utility rate and city fee hikes for the coming year, we can't get them all into one story.  

So welcome to The Daily Rate Hike , our run up to the new city budget due out this Fall.  

Matthes has raised rates, fees, fines, and taxes every year since he took office in 2012, helping earn Columbia the title "Highest Cost of Living" in Missouri city in 2015.   

To keep readers informed, we're covering this year's fee hikes, rate and tax increases in The Daily Rate Hike, our supplemental report on how you WILL pay more.   

Today's Rate Hike:  Restaurant Inspection Fees
(click to open pdf document)

Like to eat out or hit happy hour?   Expect your food and bar tab to rise, as C...

Don't tow me, bro

COLUMBIA, Mo  7/9/17 (Beet Bite) -- A yellow suctioning device that looks like Sponge Bob promises to close a rising budget deficit at Columbia City Hall, city manager Mike Matthes says. 

" The Barnacle makes great financial sense," Matthes explained in a rare exclusive interview with the Heart Beat.   "It may sound like a Sponge Bob character, but I urge people with unpaid parking tickets to take the Barnacle very, very seriously."

A high-tech version of the dreaded tire boot, the Barnacle is a flat windshield cover that prevents drivers from seeing the road .    It saves on towing costs and forces unpaid parking fines out of even the most crabby claws. 

Armed with alarms and sensors, the device is named after the marine animal that encrusts ships with its hard-to-remove shell.    Sho...

A nation fed up with expensive, expansive city intrusions 

COLUMBIA, Mo  6/22/17 (Beat Byte) -- When in 2015 a Federal Court in Ohio ruled that state's residential rental inspection laws unconstitutional , the Justices repeated:

“The physical entry of the home is the chief evil against which the wording of the Fourth Amendment is directed.”

Yet, Columbia rental inspectors enter homes virtually every day of the year, without warrants; without renter consent; and with the city's urging that property managers and owners sign away their 4th Amendment rights for rental permits.

Inspectors are permitted -- and may even be obligated -- to turn over relevant findings to law enforcement, making these rental inspections police searches by proxy .     

 

The Ohio case of Baker v. City of Portsmouth is one of many rent...