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— Quincy Massachusetts News by Quincy Quarry News – News, Opinion and Commentary.

“It’s really not that big of an increase”
A file photo

Literally pretty much nothing to see.

At this past Monday evening’s Quincy City Council meeting Quincy Mayor Thomas P. Koch made a presentation on what local tax money is spent on along with but glints of hints of how much he is planning to spend in Fiscal Year 2026.

How but glints?  

Exampling such is difficult.

The QATV video crew on a break
Image via Michael Hopper

For example, as of Thursday morning QATV has yet to make video of his budget presentation to the City Council Monday evening available for streaming even if mayor’s weekly QATV podcast interview the following day is available for streaming.

In short, nothing to see here, even if probably just a coincidence.

In any event, early on during his PowerPointing in his presentation during his presentation live in the City Council chamber Monday evening, Mayor Koch quickly posted a not aligned figure of $455,835,577 at to how much he plans to spend in FY 2026.

“It’s really not all that much money”
Image via the Boston Globe

The mayor then moved on to putting those in the room to either sleep or discreetly checking their cellphone messages given his dry stump speech recap of some of the things done with taxpayers’ money locally as opposed to providing a detailed discussion of how much and where he plans to spend 459 large.

In any event, the proposed FY 2026 budget poses an 8.6% increase in spending from FY 2025 spending commencing on the fast approaching First of July.

The key driver for the outsized the proposed spending increase is how city debt service will be soaring from $65,938,452 in FY 2025 to $89,072,350 in FY 2026, a 35% increase in debt service expense.

At the same time, Quincy Quarry News had projected upwards of a 10% spending increase for the coming year instead of the 8.6% increase one must manually calculate as the mayor did not note the rate of the spending increase proposed from current year spending. 

Upon a closer review of Mayor Koch’s proposed FY 2026 budget, the Quarry’s upwards of 10% increase projection is the better figure to consider.

How so?.

Quincy Quarry News follows the money
Image via oxycom.com

Technically, the Quarry’s projection is the better number as it includes a well-reasoned baseline minimum to cover rank and file employee raises come FY 2026 as union contracts for city employees expire at the end of FY 2025 at the end of next month or just before the start of the school year for teachers.  

However, the mayor has yet to negotiate any new union contracts and is so kicking the eventual raises down the road and thus the eventual raises will be paid differently as well as later when taxpayers are officially stuck with the bill next year.

Teachers picketing two years ago to press for a new union contract
A Quincy Quarry News exclusive file photo image

In other words, the mayor is basically kicking the can down the road meets kiting checks while at the same time delaying raises to city workers for likely upwards of a year or so, 

In turn, such will add to city union members’ financial pain as their current soon to expire contracts were negotiated before inflation soared for a time in recent years and so undercut the purchasing power of their raises per their soon expiring contracts.

Accordingly, the Quarry’s view is that it is better to endeavor to interpolate the sure to eventually happen raises into the context of the FY 2026 budget discussions as the raises will be assigned to the FY 2026 as the first year of union contracts even if the raises are not paid until later to much later.

Serious Koch administration hack hires
An old Columbia Pictures image

And as for the numbers, Quincy Quarry News’ Financial and Other Affairs desk ran the numbers and so projected needing $6.1 million more needed in budget to fund but a 2% raises for rank and file employees in FY 2026 so as to book end the fat raises approved for the mayor, key among the mayor’s senior hack hires, and city councillors that run as much as 45 times greater rate of raise.

Simply put, it is only fiiduciarily prudent to ad the $6.1 million to the FY 2026 budget to fund a reserve to cover 2% raises in the first year of new contracts even if doing so would result in a just over 10% increase in city spending in total for FY 2026 from what was less than properly projected by the mayor to be spent for the upcoming fiscal year.

Enough already
A file photo

At the same time, be sure to further note that a 3% raise in first year of inevitable new contracts would result in a de facto 10.8% budget spending increase for FY 2026.

In any event, given an only properly revised accrual manner of accounting things, the mayor’s actually planned spending increase will run roughly four times the rate of inflation as well as likely result in a several-fold rate of inflation average increase in 2026 property tax bills for homeowners as well as the second 8% or so increase in tax bills for homeowners in three years.

In short as well as yet again, koch and mirrors …

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