Columbia’s city manager says the recent Chamber leadership visit to Columbia South Carolina will pay dividends for the city in terms of downtown safety and public safety.
Mayor Barbara Buffaloe, city manager De’Carlon Seewood and first ward Council member Valerie Carroll were among the dozens of people on the trip. Mr. Seewood joined host Fred Parry this weekend on 939 the Eagle’s “CEO Roundtable”:
“It kind of reinforced that a lot of things that we’re dealing with, they have been dealing with. And they’re probably two or three years ahead of us. But it’s lessons learned and you can see some of the things that they’ve done that worked and some of the things they’ve done that didn’t work,” Mr. Seewood tells listeners.
He and host Parry also discussed the horrific 2019 murder of University of South Carolina student Samantha Josephson in Columbia South Carolina. She was kidnapped, stabbed more than 100 times and killed after she thought she was getting into her Uber.
Mr. Parry and Mr. Seewood also discussed numerous other issues during the interview, including the role of the Office of Violence Prevention, recycling and the budget. They also discussed the importance of communication. Increasing communications and engaging citizens remains a top priority for Mr. Seewood:
“We started town halls. We started you know, there’s more and more processes where we were going to really actively engage our residents,” says Mr. Seewood.
You can listen to the full interview between Fred Parry and city manager De’Carlon Seewood here.