– News about Quincy from Quincy Quarry News.

What happens to tax dollars in Quincy …
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Quincy Quarry Weekly Fish Wrap: Property taxes going up and a half a billion-dollar municipal bond issue hits the fan.

On top of all manner of road repaving projects running late, yet another City Hall snow job was pulled by committed by hack hires, city officials yet again Q’ed up on clearing snow on local streets after the first snowfall of the season and COVID infection rates again soaring, even more pain is on the way for locals.

And likely a whole lot of pain.

Tell us another story Tommy …
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Specifically, during Quincy Mayor Thomas P. Koch’s latest and for the most part weekly happy yak podcast, he yukked up that local property owners are basically looking to be slipped the banana with a roughly 3.6% increase on their property tax bills come 2022.

Granted, other nearby, as well as peer communities, are mostly looking at higher percentage property tax bill increases in 2022, Quincy taxpayers conversely pay typically higher tax bills on identical assessed value properties in many other communities.

For example, the property tax bill for an average assessed value residence in Quincy runs over twice as much as the tax bill for an identically assessed value property in Boston. 

Granted, this comparison is arguably the most extreme difference example – not to mention who wants to live in such a modestly assessed value property in Boston, more is still more.

Manna from heaven, taxpayers — whomever …
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Even so, the Koch Maladministration is already yet again talking up how City Hall is not taxing locals at the local Prop 2 1/2 allowed maximum, a bigger tax bill than in many other communities per identical assessed values is still a bigger bill no matter how Team Koch might endeavor to spin things.

And speaking of tax bills, the only reason is local 2022 property bills will not be even higher is that the Koch Maladministration was apparently only just approved in the nick of time to issue a $475 million so-called Pension Obligation Bond.

In turn, issuing this record-breaking City of Quincy bond debt obligation will allow the maladministration to kick the can of the cost of covering the woeful near the bottom of the heap shortfall of the City of Quincy’s employee pension fund down the road.

… while whistling past a graveyard.
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Way down the road as in out to (at least, ed.) 2039 or thereabouts.

So what, apparently, for the tact that issuing Pension Obligations Bond (“POB”) are very pointedly NOT recommended by the Government Financial Officers Association, the official professional association for those involved in matters of government finance and such.

The association’s reasons are summarized here.

Long odds for scoring a winning roll
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Quick and dirty, it is thus Quincy Quarry New’s official editorial position that POB’s are ultimately not all that different a risky play as was taking on subprime mortgages in the early 2000’s.  The rationale for this view: at the end of the day, Pension Obligation Bonds are little more than unhedged bets on the come by borrowers, especially given that the Koch Machine has long leveraged things to the max.

For example, this apparently still in process $475 million bond issue will result in a roughly 85% percent increase to the city’s outstanding bond and note debt.

In other words, such works out to upwards of a billion in total as well as is on the order of roughly four times as much debt as when Quincy Mayor Thomas P. Koch first came into office in 2008.

Yet another proposed koched-up Edifice Complex proposal
A rendering for the Koch Maladministration

Granted, things change over time, inflation happens, and so on.

At the same time, so too has arguably less than fiduciary responsible and not exactly tightly managed spending by the Koch Maladministration.

Even worse, even more pending koched-up spending plotted has yet to hit the fan.

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