#Quincy #MayorThomasKoch To Roll Out His Proposed #FiscalYear2026 Budget At Monday City Council Meeting

(How do you know when a politician is lying? Whenever he is talking)
A file photo

Just announced formally yesterday was posted that Quincy Mayor Thomas Koch will be presenting his proposed Fiscal Year 2026 Budget at a Monday night’s city council meeting.

With past as prologue, two things are certain.

One is that it is pretty much a given that the proposed budget will be approved with at best a few minor adjustments made mostly for show.

A bad show.

Easy spending
An Easy Money Associates/Orion Pictures

And the other: spending will yet again outstrip both the rate of inflation as well as likely entail a percentage increase more than is planned by other Massachusetts municipalities.

How big an increase?

Quincy Quarry News is already on record as expecting as much as upwards of approaching 10% increase in spending from FY 2025 spending.

The key driver of the spending increase will be a roughly $27 million increase to principal paydown debt expense in FY 2026 and the very real likelihood that the debt service expense could well be going up by close to 50%.

The twenty-seven large pop is care of the first principal paydown on a $475 million bond issued several years ago.

Normally, a municipal bond pays down the principal owed every year during the term of the bond as do mortgage borrowers but paying down principal was delayed for three years.

Follow the money ALWAYS follow the money
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The $475 million bond was issued to fund the shortfall in city employee pension obligations which are supposed to be self-financed by employee paycheck deductions,  The City of Quincy was ordered to the State of Massachusetts Public Employee Retirement Administration Commission (“PERAC”) to bring the funding its the employee pension fund up to actuarial soundness after decades of underfunding and in particular the City of Quincy’s pension fund was for over a decade foundering among the most woefully underfunded municipal pensions in the Commonwealth.

In turn, local taxpayers are on the hook to cover the pension’s funding shortfall by paying off the bond even though municipal pensions in Massachusetts are supposed to be self-funded via employee paycheck deductions at a level that should cover the nut.

A cyberheister
A file photo

Local taxpayers are also on the hook to cover millions more in related shortfalls as well as likely eventually make up the loss of $3.5 million cyberheisted from the pension fund for reasons ultimately care of lax practices on the pension board and city’s email system.

And as for the additionally projected 40% of the expected 10% spending increase, such is expected to be care of the usual free spending ways of Mayor Koch.

In any event, as well as again, Mayor Koch is scheduled to commence his budget presentations at 7:30 pm Monday nIght in the City Council chamber as well as expected to be broadcast live on QATV and so possible for those who prefer to watch safely from a distance.

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