Quincy Quarry’s State of the City recap

– News about Quincy Massachusetts from Quincy Quarry News with commentary added

Generalissimo el Jefe Alcalde Tomas Koch
A Quincy Quarry PhotoShop Phun Team meme

Mayor Koch staged his State of the City presentation a week ago Tuesday.

That it has taken so long for Quincy Quarry News to exposé it is that the range of things to skewer was both numerous as well as often gobsmackingly at odds with reality.

Case in point, event master of ceremonies, Mayor Koch’s Chief of Staph Pinocchio Walkbacker, often slipped from only appropriate levels of decorum all the way down to the puerile jocularity of a high school male sports team locker room.

Then again, he was playing to a room packed with obsequious and for the most part male vassals of an overwhelming narrow ethnic demographic as compared to the diverse and at least close to minority majority community that is Quincy.

In a germane aside, it is only reasonable to wonder how City of Quincy basic operations functioned during the State of the City what with so many of its suits and suits wannabes in attendance or if –  alternatively – many of these same peeps are not all that necessary in the first place.

Returning to Pinocchio, his usually déclassé ways included asking senior Quincy District Court judge Mark Coven to see what he could to encourage that a former longtime Quincy Ward.Councillor and now recently empaneled District Court Judge be permanently assigned to a bench in a courthouse in the Berkshires well west of Wusta.

Chicken Little, Billie Goat Gruff, Pinocchio — whatever
Image via the Washington Post’s Fact Checker

Further, as Pinocchio is the craven and cowardly puppet that he is, his target was not in attendance.

This year’s State of the City then segued onto an all but both unprecedented as well as an all but unheard of prefacing keynote presentation by a cheerleader for Mayor Koch.

While Quincy Quarry has no idea who penned her presentation, it was fraught with errata that only to be expected fluffed various of Quincy Mayor Koch’s shortcomings.

For example, she spoke of an outing with Mayor Koch some years ago while she was the head of the Massachusetts School Building Authority and mayor was pursuing state matching funding to build a new Central Middle School.

She specifically noted out how Mayor Koch talked up his vision of a new middle school on (primarily, ed.) the site of a longtime rundown local no-tell motel while they were on a field trip to the then but proposed site.

Reality, the motel has since instead also been been fully rebuilt as well as upgraded given that its owner outplayed Mayor Koch’s consigliere and thus the mayor so had to pay likely even more money to his church to buy another adjacent property than if he had offered a fair purchase price to the hotelier in the first place.

She also talked up Mayor Koch’s bold plan to bail out the City of Quincy employees pension.

So what for the fact that his borrowing a half a billion dollars to then invest in the stock market is NOT recommended by public finance experts.

LOOKOUT BELOW!!!
Image via barrons.com

Further problematic, the funds so invested were invested at the top of the market and have so been hit by the usual problems when undertaking an underfunded pension Pension Obligation Bond bailout out plan. 

For example, the pension fund’s net value at this point is likely now down 10% or thereabouts from a year ago when the bond proceeds were invested as well as has so further also failed to hit the projected 7.25% annual rate of return as a part of the mayor’s highly leveraged so-called plan.

That and how the interest rate paid on the bonds ended up running roughly forty percent higher overall than was touted by the Koch Maladministration the interest rates would run.

Net/net, at this point the employee pension fund is likely down by more than $150 million to a lot more than 150 large from from a year ago and thus instead to the red more than the $125 million Mayor Koch claimed his not recommended plan would save local taxpayers who have to assure that pension obligations are met even if the city employee pension plan is supposed to be fully funded by deductions from city employees’ paychecks.

What happens to Quincy tax revenue
Image via cheatsheet.com

Put in other terms as Koch Maladministration is notorious for its lack of transparency, if one further factors in the 7.25% return on investment that did not happen this past yard, the pension fund portfolio’s value is likely only around eight hundred and fifty million currently rather than roughly one billion and seventy million dollars or thereabouts expected per plan, not to mention that such could have only been expected as well as which was conveyed to the Quincy City Council shortly before a bare minimum off them approved going with what is a highly-leveraged financing scheme.

Further, as the keynote speaker is a purported financial expert, surely she should know better than to fête yet another arguable financial Q-up by Quincy Mayor Koch.

And then followed Mayor Koch’s State of the City address, wherein he went a whole different way to deflect from the fact that arguably out of control city spending is running even further into deficit spending status, how he has so drained city reserves down to fractions of what they should be to mask his out of control spending, and that all manner of his big bucks pet projects are running both behind to well behind schedules as well as over to way over budget.

For but some metrics of the city’s worrisome finances, the mayor’s authorized Fiscal Year 2023 was 7.7% higher than the previous years budget, an increase twice or greater than the average spending increases of peer communities.

Even more disconcerting for local taxpayers who end up covering most of the bill, between the impact of inflation and soaring interest rates on roughly a handful of hundreds of millions in variable rate city debt, locals should consider themselves lucky if the Fiscal Year 2024 budget only increases by the 7.7% that was the case with this year’s budget.

His deflect: he talked up the hard work of various of locals rather than own up to the myriad of problems of his doing that are going to needlessly impact pretty much all locals in their pocketbooks.

So what if those so mentioned by the mayor where nowhere as diverse as it Quincy.

Then again, neither are City of Quincy employees diverse.

Telling stories …
Image from a campaign mailer

Even so, as it is an election year, Mayor Koch has to throw bones to his base for both votes – for example, it is well-known that a patronage hack hire is worth at least five votes – and their “volunteering” to work on his not yet announced but widely expected reelection bid. 

Plus, one should keep in mind how city employees are likely his second largest source of campaign fund contributions after developers and other related special interests.

All in all, Mayor Koch has all sorts of things to both hold together as well as keep out of the general public awareness’s over the next nine months if he hopes to grease his way into another four years in office and so be able to continue Q-ing up the Q.

Needless to say, Quincy Quarry’s  ever-growing legions of loyal readers can thus count on the Quarry to monitor every misstep by the Koch Machine in the coming months.

View this post on Instagram

Visit Quincy Quarry Instagram Page

QQ Disclaimer