Quincy City Council to yet again discuss proposed Special Education Center

Councilors will meet for a regular meeting and a finance committee meeting Monday.  A Lauren Owen Lambert care of the Patriot Ledger.

– News covered by Quincy Quarry News with commentary added.

Opting for hiding behind Zoom?
A Quincy Quarry News file photo

Quincy City Council to yet again discuss proposed Special Education Center.

After consideration of this latest already financially metastasizing Koch Maladministration pet project was tabled by the City Council on September 9, the Koch Machine is back at to endeavor to enable Mayor Koch’s spending habits as well as his Edifice Complex.

The stated reason for the tabling: the state of City of Quincy’s finances to take on this expensive and fast tracked out of the blue project given both the financial impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic upon the City’s long woefully thin reserves and on especially its hard-pressed and higher than the statewide average property tax bill paying local home, commercial and other sorts of property owners.

The problem: the Council approved $8.5 million to buy a white elephant of a building at 180 Old Colony from Eastern Nazarene College for $6.8 million which the college had long unsuccessfully tried to sell and $1.7 million more to plan for the building’s renovation predicated upon representations from a Team Koch hack hire that the renovations costs would run no more than $5 million.

Burn rate, up in smoke – whatever
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Instead, the projected renovation costs have skyrocketed by 280% to $14 million before the usual only to be expected cost overruns and delays hit the fan on major projects solely under the control of the Koch Maladministration.

Granted, while savvy Quincy Quarry News readers surely expected a massive cost overrun coming, the at this point 280% cost overrun from the promised not more than $5 million was still breathtaking.

Even so, costs spinning out of control notwithstanding, Koch Maladministration mouthpieces continue to assert essentially the same cost savings to result from the Quincy Public Schools Department servicing local Special Education student on the Autism Spectrum rather than outplacing them to specialty schools elsewhere in spite of a 67% increase in the total cost of buying and then readying the facility for use.

Yet again Quincy Quarry follows the money …
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Even more troubling, given that Quincy Quarry News has sources both high but mostly low, it has obtained a copies of both the Koch Maladministration pro forma financial projections and a rudimentary at best summary listing of personnel costs. 

The Quarry found the maladministration’s claims both wanting as well as odds with its claims of expected cost savings.

Profoundly at odds.

Even by Koch Machine historically woeful standards, these latest projections are a joch.

Not telling the whole story?
A Koch campaign promotional image

Problems include no clearly noted projections as to how many parents of students on the Autism Spectrum will opt to return their children from outplacement, much less when.  As bringing students back from expensive out of district placements is key to this proposal’s financial viability, not providing any idea as to these expectations is deeply troubling.

Similarly, staffing cost projections would appear to not include healthcare and other employee benefits costs.  Only properly including these costs could in turn readily increase the cost of in district serving of these students by upwards a million a year.

In turn, given the above potential million more in annual costs apparently not counted, the proposed in district servicing of more students on the Autism Spectrum could so result in the proposed program running an accumulated deficit until at least 2030.

Further, given the apparent missing of upwards of a million in annuals cost, one can only reasonably suggest that another $500,000 in annual costs should be imputed into a sensitivity analysis so as to develop a worst case set of annual financial projections. 

Per this wholly understandable consideration of potential costs not included, such would indicate that the proposed program could run an accumulated deficit until 2037.

The City of Quincy Economist can’t count?
A stock public domain image

Other troubling items were found by the Quincy Financial and Other Affairs include – for but one example – how the Koch Maladministration’s “Chief Analyst/Economist” noted a long term bond debt interest rate of 3.5% in one place within his presentations and 4.0% elsewhere while at the same time looking to have used the same debt service costs across his various presentations. 

Then again, this would not be the first time the Mayor’s economist has foisted errata.

The only good news: the Koch Maladministration’s projections were so limited that potential additional problems could not be readily found.

In short, Quincy Quarry News crew can readily note state without fear of valid criticism that it has seen better business proposals written on the back of cocktail napkins as well as that Quarry team has seen a lot of cocktail napkins over the years.

Source: Quincy city council to discuss voting access, special education center

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