— News about Quincy from Quincy Quarry News with commentary added.

Boss Koch looking to knock down New City Hall to build a newer one
A Quincy Quarry News file photo

Quincy Mayor Thomas P. Koch’s State of the City Address: A Spring Snow Job?

Yesterday Mayor Koch finally presented his mostly presented annually State of the City address a couple of months late.

Normally, the local State of the City address is presented in the first part of January. 

This year, however, the address was at least largely delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic, including that Mayor Koch was secretly out sick with COVID-19 for a few weeks at the start of 2021.

Socially distant seating – whatever …
A Quincy Quarry News exclusive image

Regardless, the mayor’s State of the City speech was pretty much as expected.

For starters, Mayor Koch’s mellifluous speaking style is well-suited for reading a prepared speech. 

That and lulling people into sleep.

Additionally, Mayor Koch enjoys the benefit of speechwriters well-practiced at shoveling bovine byproduct, a product this Quincy Quarry writer well-knows having grown up in a cow county overwhelmed by methane gas spewing dairies.

That and one of the largest beef feedlots in the country.

Overcoming a pile of manure!
An old Mercury News image

The speech opened as a manner of lift speech per long-standing practice in that it thanked all of the people outside of Koch Administration who had stepped up during the pandemic and so variously saved his tukas as they actually knew what they were doing.

That as well as then talked up a number of Koch Machine members who mostly just kissed it.

Needless to say, the coat holders in attendance then kissed even more “ring” in response to their over the top feting.

And then after the pandering ended, facts then fell by the wayside.

Even so, facts are stubborn things.

In fact, the rest of what followed so rated Three Pinocchios per Quincy Quarry’s read of the Washington Post Fact-Checker scale. 

Only three outta four!
A Washington Post Fact Checker image

The reason for only three: Mayor Koch noted that it was a nice late winter day – which in fact yesterday actually was – and so fending off the assigning of a fourth Pinocchio.

For example, veracity challenged Mayor Koch followed his blowing of smoke towards others by claiming that the local public school district is one of the top public school districts in the Commonwealth. 

Is local school spending snowbound?
A Quincy Quarry News file folder

So what for the fact that the Quincy Public Schools District has consistently remained pretty much stuck at roughly two-thirds of the way down the statewide ranking list per MCAS testing scores pretty much throughout the Koch era. 

Granted, people can whine about standardized testing as they may, the reality is that the MCAS approach to assessment has long been the most effective testing approach used by any state in the country.

Plus, such a ranking is only to be expected; Mayor Koch has only provided annual school spending increases which have at best perhaps keep pace with the rate of inflation during his thirteen years in office even though he was concurrently increasing all other city spendings by roughly three times the rate of inflation.

At the same time, it is only fair to note that Quincy’s public schools do a solid job with the demographic mix of students it educates as well as that a number of them go on to attend well-regarded colleges and universities.

Even so, two-thirds of the way down in the rankings list is still two-thirds of the way down the list.

And speaking of education, Mayor Koch’s biggest policy sort of statement goal was his so-called plan to turnaround long foundering Quincy College.

Up in smoke
An oxycom.com image

The reason for his plan – previous Koched-up plans and past hires at the college at least blessed by Mayor Koch did not go well as the college has lost millions, going down from a positive low eight-figure net asset value in 2009 to just short of $18 million in the red as of June 31, 2019, well before COVID-19 hit the fan and so surely giving rise to even more red ink.

Rather than honestly acknowledging that Quincy College is inarguably in worse shape than many of the fourth-tier and especially peer fifth-tier colleges that have closed in recent years as well as how many others yet are expected to close over at least the intermediate-term given declining enrollments, Mayor Koch instead went on and on and on even more about how (foundering, ed.) Quincy College is vital to educating locals as well as important to (the also long foundering, ed.) economy of Quincy Center. 

That and so what for the fact that Quincy College is arguably the last municipally-operated junior college in the country as well as that for many good reasons the once many others such colleges are no more.

Pi Day – 3.14 – Day is coming!
Image via National Day

That and throwing in a mom, apple pie, and wrapping oneself in the flag monologue that the college should be supported by (long-suffering, ed.) local taxpayers.

So what if many, if not most, Quincy College students are not locals but whose educations local taxpayers are partially subsidizing.

And as for the crux of Mayor Koch’s latest scheme to attempt to save Quincy Quarry from his previous actions, he refloated his plan to build a fifteen-story building in Quincy Square to house mostly Quincy College as well as provide new replacement space for City Hall operations.

Then again, surely but coincidentally doing so provide him with an only to be expected fifteenth-floor penthouse office view.

Coming soon to the Q?
A Millennium Partners CAD/CAM image

And to build this latest proposed edifice complex, figure on the cost to do so running solidly into nine figures worth of additional municipal bond debt.

Granted, the plan is to have the college pay rent on the building “to help” cover the cost of building it.

So what, however, for the fact that the college has been losing money hand over fist in recent years and thus forcing local taxpayers to have to help cover expenses that the college could not cover.

As such, local taxpayers should not count on seeing all of even but merely a sweetheart rental rate coming in as the necessary hens are not yet even born to then lay eggs to then be counted.

Stop picking my pocket
A file photo

And if the college eventually implodes given its myriad of dire problems that have occurred during the Koch era, local taxpayers would so be stuck with covering the whole of the nut on the debt service to build a mostly empty building until the remaining years of a likely thirty-year payment schedule is fulfilled.

Also unmentioned: where will parking for the proposed building be provided as well as what at cost.

Even so, Quincy Quarry has a pretty good idea as to what property would be bought a takings price premium for a garage site even if surely but coincidentally buying the parcel would do a longtime Koch benefactor an extremely generous solid via the use of taxpayers’ money.

That and so what if doing the solid would make a mess of things for the MBTA to eventually perhaps endeavor to effect a proper and affordable renovation of the Charlie Foxtrot that is the Quincy Center MBTA station.

Playing a game, a very expensive game for local taxpayers
An Electronic Arts/Nintendo image

After all, Mayor Koch has long been pimping his wicked expensive plan to instead move the current bus platforms to the other side of the Red Line tracks and into a wicked expensive underground facility mostly underneath Burgin Parkway rather than undertake much lower cost as well as more effective reworkings of the current station layout.

So what if doing so would swive local traffic during the years of construction as well as that the MBTA has far more pressing demands on its scarce resources than to indulge Mayor Koch’s profligately playing around with both SimCIty.and tax dollars.

And next up, Mayor Thomas P. Koch pimped his plan to issue $400 million in municipal bonds to fully fund actuarially the City of Quincy’s among the worst off municipal employee pension funds in the Commonwealth – 102 out of 105 bad.

As usual, the mayor talked up the positives of the plan – a reduction in the current annual budget outlays to cover the shortfall.

Unmentioned, however, is how his plan would clearly appear to entail roughly doubling the time of the current binding obligation agreed to by Mayor Koch roughly a decade ago to make whole the City of Quincy employee pension fund by 2037 out to instead roughly 2052 or thereabouts.

In other words, essentially the same thing as refinancing an ongoing mortgage with but fifteen years to go with a new one with a thirty-year payout. 

Granted, annual city budget pension-related costs would drop; however, the total cost over thirty years would be dramatically higher given the payment of interest which is currently not incurred on pension fund shortfall annual make-up payments.

Look out below!
A barrons.com image

Also, so what for the fact that after Mayor Koch took up a chance a decade ago to extend making up the then shortfall which had worsened given the Crash of 2008, his peeps then did a poor job of investment management and so put the city employee pension fund even deeper in the hole.

In other words, with the past as prologue, local taxpayers could well in the future again find themselves further stuck with covering pension funding shortfalls if Mayor Koch’s pension board continues to be less than aces at investment management even after $400 million raised via a bond offering “theoretically” covers the nut for city employee pensions owed.

Hoping to avoid yet another embarrassing haircut?
An old Facebook image

That and so baiting an opining that perhaps Mayor Koch’s pension funding plan is actually fueled by the desire to endeavor to protect city employee pension benefits from suffering haircuts should Mayor Koch’s free-spending ways eventually result in the City of Quincy having to file for Chapter Nine reorganization.

After all, relocating to Florida for retirement requires a steady monthly kiss in the mail, especially as leaving behind on the order of an eight-fold increase of City of Quincy’s bond debt obligations upon local taxpayers to somewhere in the neighborhood of roughly a billion dollars would behoove one to get outta Dodge.

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