Mayor Stephen Jones broke a deadlocked city council vote Tuesday to use about $1 million in internet use tax money on facility repairs, more than 25% of what the city expects to have in hand from those funds by January.
The biggest-ticket item in the plan is an estimated $750,000 to replace roofs at the Municipal Complex and the adjacent strip mall that houses various city offices. Those roofs were patched in 2021, City Engineer Kevin Stafford said, but leaking persists.
Another $200,000 will demolish part of the dilapidated Dial-A-Bus building in East Columbus and repair the roof on the rest. The plan also includes $50,000 for repairs to the public works barn.
Stafford presented the plan to the council during its meeting at the Municipal Complex.
Initial legislation for internet use tax money, which is collected from customers with their online purchases, specified cities and counties must spend it on roads and drainage. This year, the legislature broadened allowed uses to include building assets.
Ward 3 Councilman Rusty Greene, who reluctantly supported the plan, warned he expects it to be a “one-time exception” to the city using those funds for roads and drainage. Otherwise, he fears “we’re going to find every pet project in the world to use this money on.”
“I am for using that money for paving and keeping our streets up to date,” he said during the council meeting. “However, I have been on this council, and we’ve been talking about a roof on the police department, and we’ve been talking about the dilapidated building that is in our name … for four years. And we can’t seem to tackle this.”
Jason Spears, the city’s budget chair and councilman for Ward 6, strongly opposed making any exception, instead moving to use all of it for roads and drainage, while finding other revenue sources to address the facility needs. He suggested financing those repairs, using cash reserves or “any multitude” of other options.
“I think our planning, or lack thereof, in the past has led to a lot of these backlogs of issues,” Spears said. “… I would just ask that we pivot (from) the way things have been done in the past and not just jump because we have money in our hand to do it.”
Ward 5 Councilman Gary Jefferson seconded Spears’ motion. However, Greene offered a substitute motion to approve using some of the internet use tax money on facilities, which drew a second from Vice Mayor Ethel Stewart, who represents Ward 1.
“We have equipment that would cost as much as repairing these buildings,” Stewart said. “You cannot have a city building that you let it rain inside until the building is totally destroyed.”
Piggybacking on Stewart’s comment, Chief Operations Officer Jammie Garrett noted the city’s crime lab, located in the strip mall, houses $4 million of equipment.
“We cannot let that get rained on,” Garrett said.
Spears stuck to his guns, urging the council to use earmarked money for its intended purpose and plan for large facility expenses more intentionally instead of “taking the easy route” and further deferring work on roads in need of repair.
“If this city is going to start making things work better, we’re going to have to think in a different paradigm, and we’re going to have to plan accordingly,” Spears said. “(This) is just, ‘Well I didn’t do it the last time (referring to the 2021 roof patches), so now I’ve got to make up for it. I’m sorry to put it that bluntly, but it is the way that it is.”
Spears then leaned on Greene to reconsider, but Greene held his position.
“We’ve got to fix this to where we’re not robbing this fund to pay for stuff that we need to be keeping up along the way,” Greene said. “But I know how long this has gone, and I know what condition these are in, so I’m going to vote this one time for us to fix these problems.”
Ward 2 Councilman Roderick Smith voted with Greene and Stewart, while Ward 4 Councilwoman Lavonne Harris voted against the motion with Spears and Jefferson, forcing Jones to break the tie.
Paving plan
The plan did not leave paving needs entirely in the cold.
The city gets an average $1.3 million twice a year from the use tax – in January and July, respectively.
Stafford said the plan includes more than $3.6 million in use tax funds, between what is expected in January 2026, combined with unspent money from 2024 and this year.
Of that, about $2.5 million is set aside for additional paving, which Stafford said would give each ward a little more than $320,000 to use, along with another $100,000 for the mayor to use for “things like signs, sidewalks and signals that his office gets calls about all the time.”
The paving money also will cover engineering fee estimates associated with those projects.
Another $150,000 will cover a citywide street assessment and pavement management program, which Jones said would guide paving projects moving forward.
“In July 2026, we’ll get another drop (of use tax money), and we’ll get another one the following January that we will use to pave again with the plan we have from the study,” Jones said, agreeing using the money on facilities needs to be an exception and not the norm.
Lastly, the plan includes $441,000 for various repairs to 13 city-owned parking lots. That money is leftover from a 2020 road bond.
Stafford recommended using that money to address the parking lots since internet use tax money cannot be.
Other business
In other business, the council:
■ approved necessary agreements with Friendly City Development to move forward with the developers purchasing the Burns Bottom Redevelopment District;
■ reappointed Chris Chain to the Columbus Redevelopment Authority; and
■ appointed Mary Jeter to the Historic Preservation Commission.
Zack Plair is the managing editor for The Dispatch.
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