Columbia City Council holds afternoon work session and evening meeting
September 2, 2015
By Temple Ligon
COLUMBIA, SC – Council met last Tuesday, September 1, for its 2:00 p.m. work session at City Hall.
The Columbia Museum of Art was represented by chairman Claude Walker and director Karen Brosius. The CMA is on an ambitious fund-raising campaign chasing $16 million. So far, $13.2 million has been raised. The CMA is asking the city to contribute $1 million to help with a $5 million capital improvements drive, which would add 15,000 square feet in gallery space and rework the building’s Main Street entry and its streetside façade.
That night at six council sat for its regular meeting.
The most interesting item on the agenda was what the agenda did not include albeit announced by The State newspaper that morning. The Aspyre apartment complex at the corner of Assembly and Whaley, all 400 units, is for sale. The developer wants the see the Aspyre’s property tax bill cut in half, which would greatly gain value for the sale of the complex. There was not a survey of Shandon homeowners, for example, but no one doubts the attractiveness of reducing city and country property taxes by 50% as a fixed amount for the next 10 years, particularly as a sale sweetener. Problem is, there is only one beneficiary in this half-price tax deal, while all of the Shandon homeowners continue to pay property taxes at the going rate, essentially subsidizing the Aspyre apartment complex.
Retired stockbroker Buddy Wier, a regular reader of The State, signed up to speak in putatively similar terms at the end of the council meeting, but Wier begged off once he realized the matter was not coming up.
