A Quincy Quarry News exclusive image

— News and commentary about elsewhere covered by Quincy Quarry News

Plenty of good seats available up front
A Quincy Quarry News exclusive image

Last night Quincy Mayor Thomas P. Koch hosted a State of the City spectacle which all but literally featured him wrapping himself with flags.

The event was also surely a mandatory attendance for coat holders and other sorts of locals hacks; even so, such still did not paper the house on what was an admittedly cold winter night for an event which the mayor used to roll out his latest plans for expensive Edifice Complex projects.

How expensive?

Wicked expensive.

Norfolk County Treasurer and State of the City caster of ceremonies
A Patriot Ledger image

Per an admittedly rough tally compiled by the Quincy Quarry News financial and other affairs desk, the mayor’s State of the City speech indicated that upwards of half a billion more dollars would be needed to see his dream of making Quincy great happen as well as most likely mostly at taxpayers’ expense.

In turn, such is an amount that would surely not do any favors to the City of Quincy’s downgraded credit rating by Standard and Poor last summer as well as would surely see taxpayers’ hoisting heads on pikes.

Mayor’s latest proposed Edifice Complexes include a combined Adams Family museum and performing arts center on a likely problematic site, purchase for redevelopment former Eastern Nazarene College campus and which includes a modern as well as serviceable theater, and build new grammar school next to a cemetery.

Rendering of the proposed McDermott Activities Center
Image via MacQuincy,org

At the same time, he did not mention his previously posed plans for developing some sort of recreational sports field house on Hancock Street next to Memorial Stadium where the MBTA currently has a bus maintenance and storage facility.

The MBTA bus yard will be closed once a new several hundred million dollar MBTA bus maintenance and storage facility on Burgin Parkway near the Quincy Adams Red Line station is completed and thus the old bus yard will become available for repurposing.

The Toxic Avenger
A Troma Entertainment image

After a likely expensive hazardous materials remediation, that is, given that the current bus yard has been used as a public transit maintenance yard since 1904 when it was first used as a street car yard.

In turn, Quincy Quarry is thus figuring the field house into the mix even though Mayor Koch actually moving forward with his plans is all but assuredly not happening given that the City of Quincy is essentially at its maximum borrowing capacity as well as faces more modest but still arguably more pressing projects that should rate priority status.

Also curious was how Quincy’s often imperious mayor talked up government by the people given that this year is the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States of America, something which Braintree’s most famous son and later the second President of the United States had a major role.

After all, last fall’s local city council mostly blowout elections which replaced the mayor’s vassals formerly on the city council are widely viewed as an adverse referendum of the mayor.

In short, the coming months to perhaps the remaining twenty-three months of the mayor’s current term in office should prove interesting as regards the running of the City of Quincy.

QQ disclaimer