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A Cassius Marcellus Coolidge image
— News and commentary about elsewhere covered by Quincy Quarry News
Easy money, funny money — whatever …
An Easy Money Associates/Orion Pictures
While much was made of last Monday’s council meeting running until roughly closing time for local watering holes — and thus surely much to the apparent discomfort the Quincy Mayor Thomas Koch’s representative Pinocchio Walkbacker — to review but a fraction of Quincy Mayor Koch’s proposed Fiscal Year 2027 budget asks, the key money shot of the night was perhaps the biggest instance of koch and mirrors slight of hand endeavored during the eighteen year-plus run of the Koch Maladministration.
The slight of hand was spotted by the first term in any elected office at Large City Councillor.
Spotted was how debt service payment data indicated short term interest payments due due during FY 2027 on the order of a $26.25 million but Mayor Koch’s proposed FY 2027 budget showed only $16,646,433.00, roughly $9.6 million less.
When asked to explain the difference, the mayor’s Director of Municipal Finance stated that the difference was care of the planed use of bond premium to pay down the larger figure down to the lower figure $16,646,433.00 cited in the mayor’s proposed budget.
Trimming a frog
A Shutterstock image
Bond premium arises when the interest a rate offered to be paid by a borrower is more than needed and lenders are thus willing to pay a premium to the borrower.
In short, think a rebate of sort going to the borrower care of paying a higher interest rate on the debt than otherwise needs to be paid and thus making for a curious take on the usual vigorous.
In this instance, a higher interest rate paid on roughly $500 million on annually rolling over promissory notes of a sort which are better known as Bond Anticipation Notes — or BAN’s for short.
Making funny money?
Image via Money Watch
While bond premium happens as well as is allowed, the plan to use the bond premium to pay down debt service off book looks to be a new protocol for the city’s book as well as so creatively sees FY 2027 budget spending ask gamed down from roughly a $502 million dollar and change in planned all in spending to a creatively counted but $491,849,705.00.
In turn, net of other justifiable inside accounting adjustments, a solid case can also be made that the actual spending increase sought by Mayor Koch for FY 2027 is a bit over 7% higher than the final duly revised FY 2026 appropriation and thus close to two and half times greater than the 2.9% increase posed when the mayor presented his proposed FY 2027 budget two weeks ago,
Following the money in Quincy’s City Hall is no easy task
Image via Oxycom.com
“So, my BFF Dan Flynn Flam says you are easier to borrow from than the Money Store.”
Image via WHDH
Also problematic is how the Koch Machine looks to be working bond premium annually on annual BAN debt rollovers for some years>
Needless to say, Quincy Quarry News is exploring Massachusetts Department of Revenue regs and applicable state law intended given the arguable revenue alchemy arising from annual rollovers of BAN debt by Mayor Koch to mine many tens of millions in bond premium by paying a premium interest rate on the this debt.
Mike McFarland, Pres. of Colonial Federal has been running the BAN books for Tommy for decades. The bank got bigger through this and was recently merged into North Shore Bank. Who got what in stock payouts is the question. McFarland has aided and abetted this FRAUD by Koch.
As far as I can see, Mike’s resume for becoming a Bank President was running a deli and being a City Councilor. Only in the Q….. I hope he is held accountable. I wonder how much BAN money is being held by Colonial/North Shore at this time. Tommy stretches them as long as he can so nobody sees the scheme. Open the BOOKS!!!
Maybe councilor DiBona can step in and explain the finite details of the Bond Borrowing. After all he has informed the current council, he has the experience from being a Koch rubber stamper for ten years.
Mayor Koch the High school graduate most likely does not have a clue on how the bond formula works and realizes on his minions. Even they all can’t agree when pressed with the facts. Lack the paperwork to back-up their testimony before the council is a frequent bail out.
I scroll Facebook and it’s the same circus: some Weymouth Elvira-looking lady screeching that our City Council dares question the budget. Her trained seals applaud on cue—mostly city employees and donors living fat off our taxes. One’s a former heavy smoker who magically retired on a “work-related” heart disability. Another got caught twice trying to hawk copper from city buildings. Yet these clowns demand the Council look the other way, just like Koch did for them because Donor Lives Matter.
The Quincy Circus: Cheerleaders, Car Salesmen, and Memory Lane:
The City Solicitor was completely out of line last night. He strutted into the room acting less like the city’s legal counsel and more like opposing counsel to the City Councilors. Heaven forbid the Councilors actually do their jobs and protect the taxpayers.
Let’s look at what our own City Ordinances actually say about the Solicitor’s role. According to the books, the Solicitor handles the law business of the city under the Mayor’s direction. This includes prosecuting and defending lawsuits, drafting contracts, reviewing real estate titles, preparing eminent domain documents, and providing written legal opinions to the Mayor and Council.
They are there to advise on compliance, zoning, and contracts. Notice what is not in that job description? Real estate broker. Used car salesman. Political cheerleader.
The Solicitor has no business telling the Council that a property is a “once-in-a-lifetime deal,” or using sleazy dealership tactics like warning that “other buyers are looking, so we better hurry!” He is a legal advisor, not a real estate appraiser or a financial analyst.
Basic reality check: NO bank on earth lends money for a commercial property venture without a business plan. You cannot just look at a loan officer, smile, and say, “Trust us, we will make millions.”
Bankers actually expect to see the math on paper. Yet, the Council had the absolute nerve to ask questions last night. Apparently, they failed to learn the lesson from the Fire Department turnout gear debacle: you are supposed to blindly approve massive sums of money without asking questions. In that instance, if you dared to ask where the money is going, you are immediately labeled “anti-firefighter.”
Then, we took a painful walk down Memory Lane with Councilor Noel DiBona. Every time he opens his mouth, I feel an overwhelming urge to pull out my checkbook and write a donation to the Head Injury Foundation. His performance felt like a pathetic episode of Name That Councilor. “I remember when Paul Harold was here… I remember Frank McCauley… I remember Anselmo… I remember Pat Toland and Tobin… ”Honestly, I was just amazed he managed to extract his head from Mayor Koch’s rear end long enough to babble through that nostalgia trip -— all just to awkwardly remind us that the DPW and the Department of Public Buildings are, in fact, two different things. Truly groundbreaking stuff.
Can City Council President Anne Mahoney please start taking bids on a statue of Saint Joseph of Cupertino for the Council Chambers? He was Italian, the patron saint of people with learning disabilities, and was famously described as remarkably “slow.” It feels like the perfect fit after listening to one loud mouth last night.
Memory,
City Solicitor “Dim” Timmins has to move on to other things given his ineptitude as an attorney.
For example, he is 0 for around 10 on cases taken up on appeal on behalf of the bidding his mayor, including multiple failed attempts to reverse court ruling against the city over its looting of my Adams Fund bequest.
Dim is also looking at yet another loss soon enough over the appeal up to the Supreme Judicial Court over self-ordained Father Tom’s plans to place religious statutes on Quincy’s new public safety building even though doing so would be in clear violation of state constitutional law which I authored.
Memory,
Any thoughts as to what patron saint to invoke to make our day by protecting us from self-described Hank Eastwood or do I have to instead as well as yet again saddle up my pale horse?
Well yes, but Dim is now a real estate maggot, er, magnate. Note the process by which he was allowed to build his eminently horrid apartments on Sea Street. The name of this pile of bricks escapes me at the moment but it’s certainly fitting in a darkly humorous kind of way.
His real estate venture is called the “The Imperial” and so rifting on the days when the property was the home of the now long gone Imperial Terrace restaurant.
See https://www.trulia.com/home/105-sea-st-105-quincy-ma-02169-458406186 for seriously pimped real estate puffery.
“Introducing The Imperial – the South Shore’s newest address combining a seamless blend of modern design, elevated finishes and thoughtful amenities.”
Translation — plain,ordinary, bland ticky-tacky.
“The Imperial is a Quincy icon reimagined . . . ”
Oh for joy! An ICON. (Gag barf)
Tonight City of Quincy Department Heads will shovel the BS about budgets, In particular, the police & fire budgets. Overtime in Quincy is out of control.
Imagine the police spending 7 million in overtime at a minimum every year in a city of only 100,000 people? Something is seriously wrong. The Fire Department is only slightly behind. That averages to about $25,000 in overtime paid to every fireman $35,000 to every cop but doesn’t include details as that are typically funded by third parties.
Newton is close in size to Quincy in population and area. Despite having nearly identical populations — both cities hover right around 87,000 to 100,000 residents — Quincy spends significantly more on municipal public safety overtime than Newton, with a total annual overtime difference of roughly $10 million to $11 million across both departments.
How is this possible? The total annual budget combined for the police and fire departments is roughly $93 million in Quincy but only $43.4 million in Newton.
The Finance Committee should be asking questions!
A lot of questions as well as hard ones.
Public Safety Budgets!
Why These Budgets’ Approach Undermines Sound City Budgeting.
In proper municipal budgeting, line items should represent planned, justifiable expenditures based on historical data, operational needs, and performance metrics.
They provide transparency and accountability so taxpayers and elected officials can evaluate priorities and hold departments responsible. When line items become fluid — with frequent transfers, year-end spending rushes, and minimal reversion of savings — the process loses integrity: It weakens oversight and invites inefficiency or waste.
It discourages departments from finding cost-saving measures (e.g., better staffing models to reduce mandatory overtime).
Such also erodes public trust, especially when overtime remains elevated long after external factors like COVID have subsided and hiring more people.
Massachusetts law and best practices (via the Department of Revenue’s Division of Local Services) emphasize realistic budgeting, reserve management, and transparency — not treating the budget as a loose pool of money to be fully depleted annually.
He should be before the Council over his moving money willy nilly — serious money. He is taking line items and just spending a huge pool of cash.
Time for an audit!
Why do we need to pay time and a half for services. Why can’t they hire more officers? Just raise the base pay slightly over other towns you’ll get a ton of applicants if we spend $10m on overtime then we can hire about 60 new public safety employees.
Of course they like being paid overtime as they get 50% more for the same work
I agree some things happen and might need a small amount of overtime but this is out of control.
I hope the council digs deeper. We need to cut our taxes.
Technically, paying “some” overtime can be cheaper than hiring more people as such comes with overhead costs such as healthcare benefits and subsiding retirement along with costly other post employment benefits.
Taxing,
Follow the money: the DPW, Natural Resources, Public Buildings – and drumroll please – the Mayor’s budgets have yet to be reviewed.