COLUMBIA, S.C. — Columbia City Council took up several budget items at its meeting on Tuesday night.
The first large item that received approval was an ask for $1.16 million for Columbia's Rapid Shelter, which opened its doors earlier in the day.
Howard Duvall, City Councilman At-Large, said this request is checking the box on money spent.
"They are on the site, we are ratifying the contracts and just making it official for bookkeeping purposes," Duvall said.
"The biggest part was security, some like $980,000 for a year's worth of security, that we have a private company that's gonna come in and do the security for us, and then the other two items were the turf that covers the dirt around the pallet homes, and the third item was restrooms."
The second big item that faced approval was Daniel Rickemann's request for $150,000 dollars for establishing the Office of Violent Crime & Prevention and hiring a director for the department, followed by another request for $652,800 for the project's next three fiscal years next.
The initiative is to have community leaders help Law Enforcement with a crime.
"It's bringing in, you know, folks from our churches, folks from our school system, you know, tutoring opportunities, basketball opportunities, job opportunities how to interview for a job," Rickemann said.
Lastly, the council approved the $300,000 request from Councilmember Tina Herbert for the Food Insecurity Solutions Initiative, trying to get food to those areas that might not have a lot of options.
"We've lost a lot of grocery stores, particularly in 29203 and 29204, our food policy committee recommended that we try a mobile food market, and I thought that the concept was great, and we finally with our ARPA (American Rescue Plan Act) funds, our funds from COVID had the funds to really invest in it, so what we're gonna be doing is actually putting out, going through a procurement process because there may be other great ideas just like that. The strong preference is for a mobile market but we're not gonna lock ourselves into that," she said.