Month: September 2025

Nia Hinson

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

Downtown Columbia businesses are experiencing issues and are asking for the city’s help to solve them.

“It’s a very frustrating time for a lot of the businesses,” Executive Director of The District Nickie Davis said. “We have seemingly a rotation of of people in different stages of crisis sometimes coming into businesses or being out on the sidewalks, and our businesses not really knowing what to do with that and feeling like they’re on the front lines and nobody behind them.”

To help address that, a group of city leaders and downtown business owners gathered Monday afternoon at The Blue Note to discuss resources available in the city. Leaders from the Columbia Police Department, Columbia’s city manager, Office of Violence Prevention leader, Boone County’s prosecutor office and Burrell and local shelter leaders all attended the meeting.

Davis said most of the problems businesses are experiencing are feelings of discomfort. She said she hoped the meeting will help everyone in the city be on the same page.

“It seems like a lot of us are doing amazing things but not necessarily in the same circle, talking in the same circle so that we can build upon what each of us are doing,” Davis said.

The meeting consisted of a group of city leaders sitting at a table, discussing what resources they have available that could potentially help frustrated business owners. One of the sessions included during the two-hour discussion included a portion from CPD on how owners can work to deescalate situations, or what to do when they encounter someone who may turn violent.

Assistant Chief Mark Fitzgerald provided tips including:

Presenting options, not ultimatums;

Being mindful of your body language;

Create store policies;

Be consistent when enforcing policies.

Police Chief Jill Schlude also urged businesses to be mindful of the lighting around their businesses.

City Manager De’Carlon Seewood said the city works hard to ensure people feel safe, and viewed Monday’s meeting as a time to show people the things the city is doing to do so.

“We created the hot team (Homeless Outreach Team.) We created the divert program. We created programs to help address those issues so that we can be quick to respond to the needs of our residents,” Seewood said.

Some business owners, like Keisha Edwards who owns 50 Yard Line Sports Bar and Grill downtown said the meeting was a good first step, but said there’s still work to do to address what she called a “growth issue.”

“Most of the businesses that came here wanted to be heard. You cannot sit here for two hours and listen to what the city thinks the issues are,” Edwards said. “I think this is more of a growth issue. What the business owners in the downtown area see is overpopulation. We have way more student housing. We have way more of a homeless population and I think that because of this first meeting, it opened the eyes of the business owners in Columbia to be more vocal with the city about some solutions.”

Fitzgerald told ABC 17 News that he believes the biggest areas of concern for business owners currently is the homeless population and the amount of violent crime seen downtown during the past 18-24 months.

According to Fitzgerald, there have been 11 shootings downtown since March 2024. Eight of those shootings occurred between 1:30-4 a.m. The last reported shooting downtown happened on June 8.

“I think everybody’s kind of pretty aware that the Columbia Police Department is aggressively trying to enforce the misdemeanor crimes that are preceding some of those violent encounters and I think that we’ve put a giant lever on that over the last four or five months,” Fitzgerald said. “We’ve put another lever on the conflicts between the business and the unhoused community. There’s still room to improve and a lot of that has to do with the capacity from the police department.

Fitzgerald said CPD is still understaffed, but is chipping away.

Sixteen people started the police academy on Sept. 2 and another eight or nine are in field training. According to Chief Jill Schlude, the department currently has five vacancies.

Fitzgerald said CPD is having discussions about bringing back its downtown unit.

Fitzgerald also mentioned to business owners the possibility of exploring the city of Lawrence, Kansas, to see what works for them. President of the University of Missouri Mun Choi pushed leaders to take a trip to the area.

“Let’s find out what they did so we can improve the situation in Columbia, a city that we all love,” Choi said.

That’s something Davis said she hopes the city continues.

“There’s a lot of other cities doing really cool, exciting things and it seems like they’re (The City of Columbia) starting to do that, going to look at other cities of what they’re doing, their policies, their ordinances so I hope they take a lot away from that,” Davis said.

According to Davis, the city still has grant money left for businesses that want outdoor cameras.

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Mitchell Kaminski

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

During a town hall in Harrisburg on Aug. 27, Troy Douglass went to the microphone to address Rep. Mark Alford (R-MO). 

Douglass — a lifelong farmer with farms in Boone, Howard and Randolph counties — was concerned about the future of his business. Missouri ranks seventh in the U.S in soybean production with more than 22,000 farms across the state, the sixth highest in the nation. 

On April 2, President Donald Trump levied a 34% tariff on all Chinese goods. Two days later, China responded with a retaliatory tariff on all US imports. 

The retaliatory tariffs have placed U.S soybean farmers at a 20% disadvantage compared to South American competitors. As a result, China has begun buying soybeans from Brazil, which shipped nearly 16 million tons of soybeans to China in March, its largest monthly volume ever. 

But with the U.S. harvest season approaching, China, once America’s top soybean customer, hasn’t placed a single order.

“This tariff deal really affects my world. I feel like you’re skirting the issue of China. They are the number one buyer of soybeans, number three buyer of corn,” Douglass said at the time. “Trump says two weeks ago he wants to triple China’s buying of soybeans. Well, zero times three is still zero.” 

But that wasn’t the only issue Douglass was concerned about. Tariffs from Trump’s “liberation day” have driven up the cost of fertilizer and farm materials. Douglass argued that most of the fertilizer he purchased comes from Canada, with some of it coming from Russia. However in the last year prices have doubled. 

Douglass pointed to the cost of anhydrous, which is used to help improve nutrients in soil. 

“Usually, you can buy your anhydrous in the fall for about $450 to $650 in the fall. It’s not even fall and it’s $650 today,” Douglass said at the time. “It takes about $850 to plant an acre of soybeans if you do it right. The tariff affects the farmer both ways. You can call it a revenue stream.  You can say that it is passed on or the companies eat it, I’m telling you, fertilizer, chemical, seed, all that stuff is manufactured and grown,  most of it overseas.”

Douglass later added that many tractor suppliers are struggling to buy parts.

Douglass is facing an issue that many farmers across the country are facing. On Aug. 19, Caleb Ragland, president of the American Soybean Association, sent a letter to Trump warning U.S soybean farmers were standing at a “trade and financial precipice.”

“Soybean farmers are under extreme financial stress. Prices continue to drop, and at the same time, our farmers are paying significantly more for inputs and equipment. U.S. soybean farmers cannot survive a prolonged trade dispute with our largest customer,” Ragland wrote. 

The issue isn’t new. During the 2018 U.S.–China trade war, American farmers lost an estimated $9.4 billion, according to the USDA.

In Missouri, the concerns come as soybean yield forecasts are projected to drop. A September report from the University of Missouri projects yields averaging 3-to-6 bushels per acre lower than the previous estimate.

According to MU Extension soybean agronomy specialist Andre Reis, this comes despite expecting higher yields than normal early in the growing season. 

“We were expecting to have higher yields than normal. But then in August, August was the second-driest year in Missouri since we started to record weather data,” Reis said. “During August and in early September,  this is the phase when soybeans are  using  the maximum  amount of water per day, the maximum demand and we didn’t have rains, so the drought affected  the soybean crop.” 

According to Reis, two components that decide what the soybean yield will be are the number of seeds per area and seed size. The size of the seeds is usually determined in August. Due to the lack of rains, Reis believes the yields will be lower this year than the historical average. 

“We can all agree that the price commodity is not great at this point. And part of it is because of the trade war with other countries,” Reis explained. “And then when we have the perspective of not having enough yield,   that really puts the farmers in a difficult situation to invest or prepare themselves for the next season. So it’s very hard to tell what’s going to be the impact for the next two seasons. At this point, there is no  clarity  if there will be any impact,  but  it’s going to be  a perfect storm brewing.”

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Ryan Shiner

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

Two dogs died after a home burned down in Phelps County, according to a Monday social media post from the Doolittle Fire Protection District.

Crews were called to the Sportshaven area at the end of Private Drive at 3:30 p.m., but the two-story home already collapsed by the time crews arrived.

No injuries were reported for any people at the scene.

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