Quincy City Council tables vote on special education center over cost concerns

The $14 million won’t be approved until councilors see a presentation on city finances, they said.  A Lauren Owen Lambert photo

– News covered by Quincy Quarry News with commentary added.

Quincy Public Schools headquarters
A Quincy Quarry News file photo

Quincy City Council tables vote on special education center over cost concerns.

In a gobsmacking change in behavior by usually accommodating Quincy City Council, the council put a hold on Quincy Mayor Thomas P. Koch’s ask for $14 million in funding for building renovation work said to be needed so that the city can open up a standalone special education facility for students on the Autism Spectrum. 

The ultimate reason for this rare showing of spinal rectitude by the usually invertebrate City Council: as recently as last November Paul Hines, the City of Quincy Director of Public Buildings and thus the putative project manager on this already out of control project stated that he expected final construction costs to (only, ed.) run between $4 million and $5 million.”

Up in smoke?
A cheatsheet.com image

Now, however, as well as before even but merely emptying out the building in advance of commencing a remodeling of it, much less before the only to be expected cost overruns, projected renovation costs have already soared by 280% to $14 million. 

As a point of comparison, this proposed skyrocketing cost increase would blow past the previous Koch Maladministration major project cost overrun record of almost 100% on the remodeling of the old City Hall building.

A double holer at City Hall
An iconic Quincy Quarry file photo

Even more troubling, if the $14 million additional funding ask is approved, the currently projected total $22.5 million project cost can go up to at least $23.9 million before the Koch Machine is supposed to come back to the City Council to ask for its approval of additional funding, not that it did so when costs ran out of control on the old City Hall remodeling project.

At Tuesday night’s council meeting, the City’s Director of Public Buildings said in defense of soaring costs that the plans now include spending an additional $2 million on an advanced air filtration system in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Granted, while COVID-19 should be a thing of the past by the time the project might be completed or we will all be Q’ed, Quincy Quarry can only properly note that the now proposed hi tech air filtration would likely provide future positive benefit against other airborne health risks.

Yet again shaking down taxpayers for yet another koched-up plan.
Image via danieldervartanian.com

Even so, even if one takes the $2 million air filtration system cost of the mix, the so-revised projected renovation costs are still 240% higher than what the council was advised to expect last November when it approved the purchase of the building..

Additionally, the currently projected construction time frame at this point is twenty months, meaning most likely more like not to be completed any sooner than the start of the 2022 school year rather than the original best case projection of the fall of this year or in the fall of 2021 per a follow on projection earlier this month.

Delays and massive cost overrun notwithstanding, the Koch Maladministration’s continues to hold to its claim that when the new primarily Autism Spectrum students serving facility opens that it will save the district roughly $350,000 a year in its first year of operation.

Leading the way to financial ruin with French Cuffs rolled up …
An old Facebook photo

So what, apparently, for the fact that the resultant increased debt service costs care of the soaring renovation costs should increase costs by half a million a year as well as do so for several decades, ceteris paribus, and so result in the proposed facility instead running roughly $150,000 in the red early on and who only knows how much later given all manner of arguably ambitious expectations by the maladministration.

Then again, and as Mayor Koch has long and often said, interest rates are so low that the City of Quincy cannot afford to not borrow money.  So what, apparently, for any consideration as to how such debt has to be paid back.

In the meanwhile, annual city spending during Mayor Koch’s tenure in office has been increasing annually at between two and three times the rate of inflation for years. 

Always — ALWAYS — follow the money
AN oxycom.com image

Even more troubling, such rates of spending increases and thus commensurate property tax increases needed to cover the nut can only properly be expected to continue to soar.

The key problems: even if the Koch Maladministration were to impose a freeze in the level of municipal local services provided given unavoidable soaring pension funding cost obligations and other generous city employee benefits, a couple hundred million in teaser rate and interest only paying debt scheduled to rollover into significantly higher principal and interest debt payments in the coming years as well as a couple hundred million more in additional local municipal debt issuances are variously in the pipeline.

A disgruntled taxpayer
A file photo

In other words, the City of Quincy’s finances are mired in a structural deficit and which is looking likely to only worsen in coming years.

And in turn, the Quincy City Council has now finally insisted that the Koch Maladministration provide a proper presentation on the state of the City of Quincy’s financial condition before it might consider approving this koched-up appropriation ask.

Needless to say, Quincy Quarry’s ever growing legions of loyal readers can count on the Quarry to continue to follow this story, especially as regards exposing the Koch Maladministration’s expected whistling by the Hancock Cemetery graveyard as it spews its usual bevy of bovine byproduct.

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