Quincy taxpayers to hit the wall over snow bills?

– News about Quincy covered by Quincy Quarry News with commentary added.

Inexplicably as well as expensively cleared dirt road to the boat docks behind Pageant Field
A Quincy Quarry News file photo

Quincy taxpayers to hit the wall over snow bills?

As long expected by Quincy Quarry as well as other sage observers, neither the Obama Administration nor FEMA are open to providing any more emergency funding to the embattled Quincy Mayor Thomas P. Koch’s somewhat recent new and perhaps no longer exactly bff now-Governor Charlie Baker’s requests for more disaster recovery assistance in the wake of last winter’s just barely record-setting snowfall.

As such, the City of Quincy will thus likely have only around a million in emergency federal aid to supplement its FY 2015 snow-removal budget figure of $1.76 million.

In turn, such will only cover around a fifth of at last report $13.2 million spent by the Koch Maladministration on snow removal last winter, not to mention who only knows how much more in the way of damage caused by snow clearing and moving carelessness.

Out of town plow truck on a break?
A Quincy Quarry News file photo
Click on image for larger version to read signage

Given at least $100,000.00 in damage still inexplicably done to city docks by at the same time unarguably mishandled snow, it is only reasonable to assume that the final damage claims total will run well into the mid-six figures, inclusive of city time and effort to process the sure to be numerous claims.

While surely at least some local businesses are looking forward to snagging repair work business, all local taxpayers will all but assuredly be getting the business when it comes to covering the cost of the currently estimated $11 million total snow removal deficit.

Per recent emergency action by Beacon Hill, local municipalities will be allowed to pay off their snow budget overages over the course of three following fiscal years as opposed to the usual but one year.

Charlie and Tommy after selling their hair to raise money
A YouTube screenshot still image

In the case of Quincy, allowing the extended pay-off of the snow removal bills will spread out the pain of the Koch Maladministration’s spending more than essentially any – if not in fact every – comparable municipality in Eastern Massachusetts per any and all valid methods of comparison.

The net result per a three payment plan works out to an annual surcharge of a sort of approximately $115 a year upon the average local assessed value of a private residence.

Conversely, the Koch Maladministration has already tried to change the subject by suggesting that it may be possible to perhaps cover at least some of the massive snow removal cost spending deficit with “Free Cash.”

Milton Friedman – a true fiscal conservative and Nobel Prize winner. A Wikipedia photo

Not exactly duly acknowledged, however, is that “Free Cash” is left over taxpayer-funded appropriated funds for the annual budget that not even the Koch Maladministration was able to fully spend.

In other words, over spun spin by the Koch Maladministration notwithstanding, Nobel Prize for Economics winner Milton Friedman was right: “(t)here is no such thing a free lunch.”

Similarly not acknowledged by duly embattled Mayor Thomas P. Koch is how a bit over four years ago he boastfully (mis)proclaimed on Talk of the Nation, a major national broadcast public affairs interview show, that he has come with an innovative way to both reduce the cost of snow removal for the City of Quincy as well as improve the quality of the removal work.

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