The topic of diversity, or the lack thereof, was discussed Tuesday night at the Columbia Board of Aldermen meeting.
Charles Lampton and the Rev. R.T. McGowan addressed the board with their concerns of the lack of minority participation in the downtown Christmas celebration.
“If you want to have peace, you got to cooperate. We have a little problem,” McGowan said.
McGowan said there are concerns among minorities over the lack of opportunity to participate in the Christmas celebration.
“We all know it takes blacks and whites working together. Christmas is for all of us,” he said
McGowan said he believes if communication was better between all parties, he thinks everything will work out. Lori Watts, president of the Marion County Development Partnership, said she thinks there was a breakdown in communications.
Watts said she anticipates a follow-up meeting to be held once the downtown celebration ends, and at that meeting their concerns will definitely be raised.
“I don’t think anybody intended for anybody to be excluded,” Watts said.
Lampton said they felt like black vendors were excluded in the participation with Experience Columbia.
“We just wanted to let the mayor and the board know we are concerned because we were excluded from the celebration,” Lampton said.
If local businesses want to participate, they should be allowed, Lampton said.
Mary Johnson, a black woman, wanted to participate in the Experience Columbia downtown Christmas celebration as a vendor, but she said she was given the runaround. Johnson said she started her attempt to participate in September in trying to participate. She said she was told she had to rent a building downtown to be a vendor. Then, she said she was turned away for the kind of food she was serving, and was later told by someone at Experience Columbia, they already had all of their vendors.
“I don’t think there was any reason we were not able to participate because we are residents of this town, and we do have businesses,” Johnson said.
Mayor Justin McKenzie said the celebration had gotten better each year, but there is definitely room for improvement.
On Thursday, Kristian Agoglia with Experience Columbia said that this year was full of uncertainty with the pandemic and in the end they made the decision to stay in-house. There were a couple of pop-ups in store fronts downtown he said, but they were done by people on their own and not through Experience Columbia.
In other business, the board approved the closure of Park Street, from Branton Avenue to the gate at City Park a total of 467 feet. The land will revert back to the Columbia School District. In order for a new regulation-size track to be built at Columbia High School, the construction of the new stadium will require expanding too where the street is situated.
In the clerk’s report, the city received $296,979 in diversions of sales tax for the month of November. That is more than $37,000 than in 2019. Also collected was $75,769 from the 3% tourism tax, more than $9,500 more than the previous year.
