Get to know the candidates for Columbia City Council’s District 4 special election

Two people are vying to fill the open District 4 seat on Columbia’s City Council, previously held by Joe Taylor. Taylor died unexpectedly in December.

The candidates running for the position are both longtime Columbia residents.

Peter Brown grew up in Columbia, left to attend the University of Notre Dame, and then returned and later relaunched his family’s business. He runs Colite, a professional signage company based in Columbia that has worked with the likes of Amazon, Visa, Microsoft and more. Brown is also a former chairman of the S.C. Jobs and Economic Development Authority.

Beatrice King has lived in Columbia for 30 years and served on the Richland 1 school board for a decade. She came to Columbia from Paris in the spring of 1989, drawn by her brother’s love of the South and the University of South Carolina. She worked in corporate jobs in Paris and South Carolina for more than a decade before putting her career on hold to raise her children, and she also graduated from USC’s Master’s of International Business program.

The District 4 special election will be held March 28. The district covers much of the eastern portion of the city, including the Lake Katherine area, neighborhoods including Kings Grant and Crosshill, and Fort Jackson.

The State asked both candidates five questions to help voters get to know them better. Their responses to the questions are listed below, edited for grammar and clarity.

Peter Brown

What do you think are the biggest challenges facing Columbia?

I think Columbia has kind of institutionalized some challenges. I think that the biggest challenge we have is that we have a tax situation that has made it really hard to do economic development in Columbia.

And you see this when we go through projects — we have somebody who wants to do a project, and immediately they ask for a tax break, and that’s because the tax system is set up to be a non-level playing field between owner-occupied and non-owner occupied (properties). So we’ve put ourselves in somewhat of a difficult position historically and institutionally, but then we’ve also made it even harder to do business just because Columbia over time has developed a lot of rules around economic development. And of course, as soon as we develop rules, we want to start breaking them.

I think that’s the number one problem. I think I can bring some insight into solving that problem. I think my business experience and our business that we have and the fact that we do business all over the world kind of gives me a special skill set to maybe bring some new ways of doing things to Columbia.

What are the city’s biggest opportunities?

I think what’s amazing about Columbia is that we’ve got so many positives. Let’s start, we have state government. We’ve got the University of South Carolina. We’ve got other colleges. We’ve got a great hospital system. We’ve got great people. And somehow we’ve managed to not bring all that together into the the general positive feeling or vibe around that, and I think part of the problem is for too long Columbia has not work together to to make itself better. We’ve kind of self-segregated ourselves into neighborhoods and different entities, and it’s kind of been a free-for-all of activity.

So what I want to do if I get elected is I want to be a uniter, or not a divider. I want to bring people together. I want to look for common ground. I want to look at issues and I want to come up with with ways for people or these different groups to to not have a winner and a loser in every situation but to have all of us be winners.

If you could change an existing city policy/practice or add a new one tomorrow, what would you do?

I would love to get rid of all the unnecessary rules we have in Columbia for when it comes to economic development. I think the mayor and Joe Taylor were doing a pretty good job of kind of getting rid of some of these just unnecessary rules, and I want to just make it easier to do business.

If I get elected, I’m going to push to have project managers within the city. So somebody who’s doing a development, we’ll have somebody to help them, not people to help stop them from doing development, but somebody really to make it easier to do business in Columbia.

What do you think makes you different from your opponent in this race?

I think my business experience is really the key. I restarted our family business with my brother 31 years ago. We’re a global sign manufacturer. We do work for major corporations and retailers and hotels all over the country all over the world. I just think it gives me the ability to kind of just look at issues and problems, and I think problem solving and also getting people to work together. So I think that’s my number one benefit over my opponent.

In speaking with voters, what do you think their biggest priorities are, and how will you address those?

Number one is public safety. Number two I think is quality of life. Public safety I think should be obvious. They want to feel safe. They want to be able to go to the park. They want to be able to not be approached by somebody as they’re walking leaving their business. They they want to feel safe.

Number two, quality of life. I mean, (it comes) down to potholes to water leaks to stop signs to speed bumps to being clean, you know presentable. They want to be proud of Columbia, and they want to have a community that everybody can can benefit in.

I talk about running Columbia like a business, and what I really mean by that is that the two things that we concentrate on in business are customers and our employees. And I think we need to treat the citizens of Columbia like customers, and I think we need to make it easier for them to voice their concerns and opinions, and that’s what I’m going to do.

Beatrice King

What do you think are the biggest challenges facing Columbia?

Public safety is absolutely number one. And within that public safety is the homelessness issue. So that’s a big issue. And then economic development, the tax structure are certainly topics that we need to address and fix.

So, we have to deal with public safety and homelessness. .... We’re going in the wrong direction (with police vacancies), and I understand that Council and the mayor have made some good choices and good decisions and increasing the budget, but at the end of the day, we’ve got to be able to recruit more officers. We’ve got to make it attractive to them. We’ve got to give them an increase in pay and give them incentives that entice them to come and live in Columbia. We’ve got to tell our story, that Columbia is a wonderful city to to live in and raise a family.

And part of that public safety is the homelessness issue. It’s been a downtown area issue for a long time. But we’re starting to see it really creep into other commercial corridors and into our neighborhoods. And certainly District 4 is affected by it. ... There is an initial step at the Council level with 50 (pallet shelter homes), but that’s just the initial step. I think that we need to push further to step two, three and four. The hard thing is not to get the homeless into those temporary shelters. The hard part is to get them out and find long-term housing solutions.

What are the city’s biggest opportunities?

The quality of life, I always come back to that. The quality of life is Columbia’s biggest opportunity. The location, between the ocean and the mountains, the three rivers that we have, the restaurant scene that we’re starting to see expanded, the concerts seem to be a big draw in Columbia. In fact, folks that have Airbnbs are telling me that for some of them it’s like the number one draw.

The riverfront... City Council (is) accepting a donation of 7.5 acres of riverfront, that is a huge opportunity. We also have so many universities, with USC and two HBCUs and Columbia College. That’s an educated workforce that’s right here that we can retain. So those are just absolutely wonderful opportunities.

If you could change an existing city policy/practice or add a new one tomorrow, what would you do?

Oftentimes politicians want to make their marks, and oftentimes it takes the form of adding a new statute or a new regulation. My stance is the opposite. I think that overall we have in general too many regulations and outdated regulations. When I was on school board, we had an annual practice of going and reviewing all of the policies that we have. First of all to make sure that they are in compliance with the law and also to make sure that they’re not some outdated policies and no longer relevant.

I’m more inclined to do with less than with more regulation.

What do you think makes you different from your opponent in this race?

There are a number of things. Number one is my experience. I’ve got 10 years (with Richland 1) of scrubbing budgets that’s twice the size of the budget of the city of Columbia, identifying waste and fraud and abuse. Fiscal responsibility, always looking out for the taxpayers’ money. I’ve got a 10-year established record.

But frankly, for me the biggest difference is that I stand on my own. I’m independent, and I am not beholden to anyone or any faction. I’m running on my own merits and not someone else’s endorsement.

In speaking with voters, what do you think their biggest priorities are,and how will you address those?

Residents in District 4 are starting to really, really care about the homelessness crisis. They understand the quality of life impact that it has, and they understand the impact on economic development that we need here in Columbia, but they’re starting to see it seeping into their neighborhoods. And so they are definitely concerned about that.

And then the second biggest issue, frankly, is the poor state of our roads. And that is absolutely across the entire district. I believe that’s something that everybody throughout Columbia is concerned about. The state of roads is definitely big.