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

IT’S A TRAP!!!
A George Lucas Pictures image

Quincy Quarry Weekly Fish Wrap: The Empire strikes back!

It was probably just a matter of time before La Kocha Nostra came back with some muscle after the City Council tried to cut Quincy Mayor Thomas P. Koch’s City of Quincy American Express Black Credit Card limit.

Quincy Mayor Koch has been seeking to free up tens of millions of taxpayers’ money to feed his out of control spending jones by kicking the can of the cost to cover the City of Quincy’s among the worst in the state underfunded city employee pension funds way down the road by refinancing the current mandatory fifteen-year payment in full plan out to thirty years via a pension obligation bond.

Shell game, legerdemain – whatever
Image via Margaret Street Church of Christ

The key to the thirty-year grift is to duck the currently mandated as well as wicked ugly skyrocketing annual pension shortfall make-up payment nut.

The key to the thirty-year grift is to cut the annual pension shortfall make-up nut payment.

So what if it doubles the number of years that nuts will have to be squeezed as well as at not inconsiderable extra interest expense so that Mayor Koch can continue to enable his long out-of-control spending habit, wicked scary as well as impossible to hedge financial leverage so undertaken notwithstanding.

In other words, Koch and mirrors meet creative accounting legerdemain.

A recap of recent events follows.

Councillor Harris, left foreground; Finance Committee Chair McCarthy, right foreground

At the June 14 City Council meeting, the council voted to allow no more than a twenty-year bond or whatever less that state officials might allow and which was a very prudent move, subject to whatever state officials might allow in the way of fewer years once the paperwork is submitted and then perhaps approved.

But then the council folded on its successful motion two weeks ago by passing a new motion last Monday which allowed no more than a twenty-year bond unless state officials allow as much as a thirty-year bond.

What can Quincy Quarry News say other than that muscle happens. 

Youse should vote as I say – capiche
Image via cartoonink.com

After all, we’re talking La Kocha Nostra.

That and so also increases the likelihood that Quincy will be featured in at least a couple chapters of a future Michael Lewis book on how issuing sure-fire bonds can end up going up in smoke by Koch’s ratching up the leverage on an already risky play.

A very risky play.

Further problematic, Mayor Koch is already planning to spend all of the roughly $21 million he expects to see in the way of this years’ creative grift to reduce the annual pension payout even as he doubles the time such payouts will be required on other things as well as spent $6 million more yet from last year’s spending on not pension-related outlays.

Up in smoke!
An ocycom.com image

This increased spending also worsens the City of Quincy’s long-ongoing structural deficit problem by further increasing the amount of the total city budget nut.

If, that is, his thirty-year bond grift is approved by various state officials without a hitch.

In short, so much for providing long-suffering taxpayers with a little property tax relief.

After all, a shopaholic with a spending jones on his back has to spend.

Edifice Complex, Napolean Complex – whatever
A Koch Machine rendering

That and he also has $46 million in federal COVID-19 pandemic relief aid that he is looking to blow on all sorts of other koched-up wastes of tens of millions of millions of taxpayer-funded dollars on all manner of new Edifice Complexes.

After all, Tommy needs a sixteenth-floor penthouse office view of Houghs Neck, if not also as much of Kochlandia as humanly possible for Quincy’s vertically challenged mayor.

Plus, lifts in one’s shoes can only do so much to heighten one’s stature.

QQ disclaimer