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Image via The Cigar Life Guy
— Quincy Massachusetts News by Quincy Quarry News – News, Opinion and Commentary.
Michael the Archangel puts boot down on a perp
Image via the City of Quincy
In spite of taking a pounding in recent weeks over his plans to put constitutionally and otherwise proscribed bas relief statutes of Roman Catholic saints on the public property that is the impending new City of Quincy Police Headquarters and which is already nicknamed the Death Star by local police officers, Quincy Mayor Thomas Koch rolled out his plans to octuple down on his Agalmatophilia,Complex spending of taxpayers’ money with a dollop of Edifice Complex on the side to see a small pocket park featuring a statue of John Quincy Adams completed by his July 11 birthday but more likely perhaps by his father’s birthday on October 30.
Iconic statute of Abigail and a young John Quincy Adams
Image via Image First
A key reason for this statuary park is that Mayor Koch koched-up on seeing a proper statute of John Quincy Adam in Quincy Center when a perfectly lovely statue of him with his mother Abigail was not recycled on site when Koch spent $35 million on Kim Jong Koch Plaza, once formerly known as the Hancock Adams Green.
Accordingly, Mayor Koch was subsequently shamed into at least seeing Abigail duly honored given the hectoring of inexcusably offended and mostly local women even if he then managed to both cheaped out on doing so while at the same time needlessly overspending on the replacement statute that was thrown up by him.
Is a City on the Move constipated?
An iconic Quincy Quarry exclusive image
Further problems with the impending small statuary pocket park’s plans include that it will reduce local property tax revenue by over $47,000 a year by taking the land off of the local tax rolls as well as stick local taxpayers with the cost of maintaining this modest green space mostly for the benefit of a Quincy-based mutual insurance company that has long been talking up building on the other side of the street a fourteen story or thereabouts mixed use building on property owned by it that is currently used as a parking lot.
Then again, the mayor has a long history of providing incentives to favored special interests at the expense of local taxpayers so why not yet another one?
A bombastic statue of Stalin rightly bites the dust
A Nino Chibchiuri/Reuters image
And as for yet another problem, Mayor Koch yet also commissioned this latest City of Quincy statue with a Soviet-trained and thus Stalinist school sculptor as well as apparently not putting the commission out for public bidding, much sought any public input or even provided knowledge of his heretofore until recently secret plans to install prominent saints of his Roman Catholic faith on public property.
I am sure the previous owner of the property made a deal with Mayor Koch that benefited both parties. Watch the campaign donations as the family will be giving thousands on paper.
BTW, what is the plan for the church the city just purchased on Lincoln Avenue on Wollaston Hill? After all, local taxpayers will not be paying for the upkeep and utilities on a church! Maybe this will be the new meeting place/clubhouse for the Mayor’s Men of Divine Mercy. They can cut back on the heat if they wear their fleece vests that were purchased with stolen city funds courtesy of Tom Clasby and who is currently charged with stealing funds from the city’s senior center.
You cannot make this stuff up. The Kock Klan and the rubber stamp city council are two of a kind. DiBona’s best line this week was a question: how big will the gym in the new police station be? Meanwhile, the room was full of taxpayers wanting to address the excessive spending on this project whereas Councillor Devine yet again prattled through a series of ah’s telling the crowd what a good job the council does.
Has the final price of the long awaited new public buildings offices on Greenleaf ever been discovered? I understand the final cost was way over budget with all the do overs the Commissioner insisted on. It would be nice to see some photos of the final product.
Sam,
The final price is not known — to the public anyway — as the work does not yet appear to be completed.
At the same time, the Public Commissioner is not the only one to blame as reliable sources have it Mayor Koch has thrown his weight around with changes in plans.
In the meanwhile, the commissioner is said to still be parking his Sunday ride in the garage as well as also parks floats from his yacht club on public property of a sort for the winter.
What is the current estimated cost of the “much needed” animal shelter?
Joe-Joe,
At last report out of the city and reported by the South Shore Broadsheet last spring, the animal shelter was projected to run just a tad short of $28 million. At the same time this figure does not include the rumored near million dollars spent on the road to reach the site of the impending shelter nor any only to be expected cost overruns.
More telling is the following: Father Bill’s/Main Spring spent roughly the same money per overnight guest at its homeless shelter which includes 30 studio fully equipped studio apartments as well as all manner of services space as the City of Quincy is spending on each of its guests in what is ultimately a cathouse.
another day, another Koch-funded monument to… whatever he feels like glorifying this time. Quincy’s own Michelangelo (minus the talent, vision, or restraint) just can’t stop spending taxpayer money on statues. Schools crumbling? Roads full of potholes? Housing crisis? Nah, what we really need is another bronze hunk of nostalgia plopped onto city land like a forgotten lawn ornament.
At this point, it’s less about honoring history and more about feeding whatever bizarre statue fetish Koch has developed over his never-ending reign. Seriously, does he have a secret marble room in City Hall where he just gazes at his ‘legacy’ in the form of overpriced public art? Because between the endless John Adams tributes and random historical figures no one asked for, this is starting to feel like a very expensive personal obsession.
And let’s not forget, every dollar going into these statues is a dollar not going into fixing the T, stopping floods, or keeping Quincy even remotely affordable for working people. But hey, why spend money on stuff that actually helps residents when you can erect yet another lifeless sculpture and call it ‘preserving history’? Priorities, am I right?