In their words: Sid Sullivan

By Pierce Courchaine

Published March 16, 2010

This is the sixth and final installment of "In their words," a series of interviews with Columbia's mayoral candidates leading up to the April 6 election. This week is retired businessman Sid Sullivan.

The Maneater: For the students who don't know much about you, why don't you tell us about yourself?

Sid Sullivan: I'm a retired businessman. I spent 14 years with a company called Roche Diagnostics. That's a subsidiary of Roche, a pharmaceutical company. I worked in the diagnostic division of that company in sales and marketing. I've also worked for the circuit court of Cole County, worked for a criminal justice agency there. My family is in the area of regional and urban planning, so I have always had an interest in the way cities grow, how they develop and how they sustain themselves.

M: Now we're going to dive into some general topics we've been asking all our candidates. The first is crime. Do you feel Columbia has a crime problem?

SS: Every city has a problem with crime, and it's a question of the degree to which is has it. We've had a couple of high-profile incidents, so that's brought the attention to crime in Columbia. There's some concern of the neighborhoods and a concern that the city and downtown district is putting a lot of pressure on spending money to solve the problem of crime in the downtown area that is actually declining, leaving the neighborhoods to fend for themselves.

M: How do you feel about the proposed ordinance that would allow the city's police chief to put more surveillance cameras downtown?

SS: I personally feel that this is the cost of business. That if the downtown businesses are providing alcohol to people, and they're going out and fighting in the street, somehow they either restrict the amount of alcohol close to the end of closing time of the bars and taverns, or it is a cost of that business where they provide the security downtown. By allocating funds just to the downtown area when the neighborhoods are the ones that are feeling not so secure, I think it is a gross misallocation of funds. I welcome the chance that it is on the ballot, but I strongly oppose the initiative of Proposition 1.

M: Aside from the general topics we've talked about, what issues do you feel are important to students?

SS: We need to have the integration of needs of the citizens of the community in terms of basic noise issues. You can't expect the basic noise issues downtown. People that talk about mixed use and want to live downtown say there is too much noise here on Saturday night. Well, you didn't need to move in downtown. You knew that there would be noise; that's always there. But in terms of neighborhoods, of student residents in the neighborhoods, there has to be some kind of tranquility that we have in the neighborhoods.

M: The university is the largest employer in Columbia. How would you improve the relationship between the city and the university?

SS: In terms of taxing body, the university pays no taxes. So, in some respects that's a strain on the city budget. The recent issue in terms of the funding of our sewers, where the university has been exempt from the base rate of taxes and we need to share some of those cost with the university.

M: How would you go about sharing those costs? Would those costs be passed on to students?

SS: They could be. The university has its own water supply, so the city has designed a system where they charge for sewer based on the water meter. Because the university has its own water, they were charged $6.10 for the entire university. Because the way the charges are appropriated, it's that $6.10 rather than each individual unit so I think we need to spread that cost out. How that's done, you can't really do that in terms of a rate shock of saying, "Well, $6.10 times 12 times 8,000," that's a lot of money.