April 3, 2012

Tuesday is a municipal election for Columbia, a very important day for the city. Residents will cast votes for two City Council seats, two positions on Columbia’s Board of Education and two ballot proposals.

Every single one of these issues is important enough to bring citizens out to vote, but for students, the contest for City Council representative of Columbia’s Sixth Ward is the most imperative.

The Sixth Ward is marked by the boundaries of Providence Road, Stadium Boulevard, College Avenue and Broadway. The constituency consists of a large portion of MU students, considering the Sixth Ward includes East Campus and various apartment complexes along Stadium.

It is necessary that students take the opportunity to vote for a representative who will best serve them and the City of Columbia. That representative is Barbara Hoppe.

As the incumbent candidate, Hoppe has years of experience on the City Council and a proven track record. She has served since 2006, a total of six years, and with two terms under her belt, is currently the longest-serving member of city council.

Throughout her tenure, Hoppe has been an advocate for environmental sustainability and community service. She helped get the first renewable energy ordinance passed, helped establish the city’s first sustainability coordinator position and co-chaired the mayor’s committee which established the first ongoing source of funds for Columbia’s city parks. Hoppe also played an important role in setting lower and safer residential speed limits throughout Columbia. The Columbia Tribune recently endorsed her.

Hoppe’s opponent, Bill Tillotson, cannot claim as much city government experience, but he has served on the city’s venerable Planning and Zoning Commission since 2010. Tillotson works as an insurance agent, and his platform reflects this. Throughout his campaign Tillotson has focused on fiscal responsibility and transparency. As a board member for the New Century Fund, a not-for-profit corporation aimed to solicit funds for city projects, Tillotson said his business experience and “pro-growth” credentials are reasons Columbia citizens should elect him to the Sixth Ward seat. Tilltson’s business and commerce background have won him the endorsement of the Columbia Chamber of Commerce.

The largest fault of Tillotson’s candidacy, however, is the highly negative advertisements he released criticizing Hoppe’s role in a settlement between the East Campus Neighborhood Association, the MU Beta Theta Pi fraternity chapter and the architects the fraternity hired to construct its new house on College Avenue.

The building was approximately 7 feet taller than what city zoning regulations permit. Hoppe served as an adviser in the negotiations that led to a cash settlement and the East Campus neighborhood agreeing to drop their complaint. The details of the negotiation were kept secret by a confidentiality agreement, and Tillotson accused Hoppe of improperly helping her political backers while the Beta House had to rely on outside counsel and questioned why she was quiet on the settlement terms.

Although it’s always in the city’s best interests that questions be raised in such circumstances, the manner in which Tillotson raised them is outrageous for a local election, and it sheds a negative light on his platform. The accusations are particularly disturbing when Tillotson himself has what can be seen as potentially negative instances in his history: He served a year of unsupervised probation for violating an animal control ordinance, a leash law, in 2005, and was pardoned in 1998 by Governor Mel Carnahan for a 1976 fraud conviction.

Tillotson accuses Hoppe of helping her political backers, but it is important to note that those “political backers” are members of her constituency, and that both parties of the negotiation agreed to the settlement.

Continuing with issues more relevant to students, both candidates list student conduct related points on their platforms. Yet where Hoppe can point to specific instances, Tillotson has made only general statements. Hoppe voted to make possession of marijuana a municipal violation instead of a state violation and is proposing to expunge individual’s records of minor violations after two years with no violations. Tillotson, meanwhile, has said that some city-policing practices appear to target students unfairly and that he plans to look into why students who get a ride home from a bar are often followed home, but does not refer to any specific times when this has occurred.

As for the transit system, Hoppe emphasizes an expanded service, and Tillotson argues that the current system first needs to be paid for before adding to it. Tillotson’s point is a solid one, but he provides no specifics as to how he hopes to pay for it.

The vague generalizations of Tillotson’s platform and his negative campaigning make Tillotson’s candidacy unconvincing enough to warrant the ousting of Hoppe.

A vote for Tillotson is a vote for a businessman. A vote for Hoppe is a vote for a real representative, what Columbia really needs.