elpasospeak

The other day in Re-re-financing we saw that the city council was going to vote on issuing new bonds to re-finance bonds that were issued in 2007.  The bonds that were issued in 2007 were used to re-finance bonds that were issued before that.  We haven’t been able to trace when they were originally issued.

Looking further into the issue the “Amended Continuing Disclosure Report For The Fiscal Year Ended August 31, 2014” showed us that:

The bonds that were issued in 2007 are being paid down at the rate of 3.2 million dollars a year in 2015 increasing to a rate of 5.7 million dollars a year in 2027.  It unfortunately was not going to stop there.  The final payment listed was going to be in 2032 for $32,795,000.

What they are doing is that they are selling bonds with slow payments in the early years and huge payments at maturity.

In fact, just looking at the final payments for some of the bonds they have already issued we can see that they are back-end loaded.  Our children and grand children will have to pay these bills:

2032 $32,795,000 General Obligation Refunding Bonds, Series 2007

2032 $11,355,000 Combination Tax and Revenue Certificates of Obligation, Series 2007

2032 $12,395,000 General Obligation Bonds, Series 2007A

2033 $17,530,000 General Obligation Bonds, Series 2008

2034 $17,700,000 2009B Combination Tax and Revenue Certificates of Obligation

2034 $49,470,000 General Obligation Refunding Bonds, Taxable Series 2014

2035 $48,245,000 Taxable General Obligation Pension Bonds, Series 2007

2036 $19,150,000 2010B Combination Tax and Revenue Certificates of Obligation

2038 $10,520,000 Combination Tax and Revenue Certificates of Obligation, Series 2012

2038 $12,870,000 Combination Tax and Airport Revenue 2014

2040 $22,705,000 Combination Tax and Revenue Certificates of Obligation, Series 2014

There are many more.  We left off the ones under ten million dollars.

No intention

The bonds above come to over $250 million that will be due in the 2030’s.

Remember that city council had to impose a franchise fee on our water utility just to cover a $3 million budget shortfall this year.

They simply will not have the money to pay off these bonds.  What will they do?  If we have city representatives  that think the same way our current ones do they will re-re-re-re-finance the bonds.

At some point in time this will fall on our heads.

Don’t think for a minute that businesses being asked to move to El Paso have not figured this out.

We deserve better

Brutus

Tomorrow’s (June 23, 2015) city council agenda has items on it that would authorize the sale of about $200 million of bonds

The way it breaks out is:

$35,375,000 from the $473,250,00 quality of life bonds that we voted for in 2012.  That will bring the total amount issued to $49,375,000.  It only took three years to handle 8.3% of what we voted for.

$110,000,000 of refunding bonds.  These bonds will be used to pay off bonds that we sold in 2007.  The bonds that we sold in 2007 were used to pay off bonds we issued before that.

$62,000,000 in certificates of obligations.  Council doesn’t think that we need to vote on these since they know a lot more about what is good for us than we do ourselves.

Debt policy

Council actually has a formal debt management policy.  They passed it last week.  In part is says:

“Bonds are generally issued with an average life of 20 years or less for general obligation bonds, certificates of obligation and revenue bonds but may be greater for some projects such as landfills and major utility facilities whose lives are greater than 20 years.”

Baloney!

The proposed bond ordinance says:

“the maximum maturity date for any Bonds issued to refund the Refunded Bonds shall not exceed December 31, 2033”.

Let’s see, 2015 to 2033, that’s 18 years.

Refund the Refunded Bonds

That’s 18 years for this sale.  What they are re-financing is bonds that were sold in 2007.  That brings us to 26 years.

Oh wait!  The bonds that were sold back in 2007 were actually sold to refund bonds that had been issued prior to 2007.

Talk about kicking the can down the road.

We deserve better

Brutus

Word got to me the other day that a citizen was complaining that the email addresses of city officials were disappearing from the city’s web site.

I decided to have a look for myself.

Checking each of the departments I found that many listed their personnel along with their phone numbers and email addresses.  Those that did not were:

City Attorney, phone numbers only.   I doubt that the city records phone calls and  you cannot use emails (which are subject to open records requests) with this department.

Destination El Paso, phone numbers but no email addresses for staff members listed

Economic Development, a phone number but no staff members listed

Human Services, phone numbers but no email addresses for staff members listed

Information Technology, as you could predict they have pictures of their managers but neither telephone numbers nor email addresses.  Don’t call them, they won’t call you.

International Bridges, no staff listed

Libraries, no staff listed

Municipal Clerk, phone numbers but no email addresses for staff members listed

Municipal Courts, no staff listed

Museum of Archeology, no staff listed

Office of Management and Budget, phone numbers but no email addresses for staff members listed

Office of the Comptroller, phone numbers but no email addresses

Parks and Recreation, interesting.  Phone numbers but no email addresses listed.  Clicking on the staff member’s picture brings up a form that you can use to send in your thoughts (sometimes).

Planning and Inspections, no staff members listed

Police Department, no staff members listed

Public Health, no staff members listed

Purchasing and Strategic Outsourcing, phone numbers but no email addresses

Office of Resilience and Sustainability, staff listed but no direct phone numbers or email addresses

Streets and Maintenance, no staff listed.  That explains a lot.

Sun Metro, no staff listed.

Consolidated Tax Office, no staff listed.

Zoo, no staff listed

With no email traffic deniability is easy.

We deserve better

Brutus