Unwise promises

August 29, 2018

Voters in Houston, Texas overwhelmingly approved the issuance of up to $2.5 billion in bonds for flood control.

From the flood control district website:

The explanation given is that the bonds will be sold over a 10 to 15 year period.

The explanation does not even answer the question asked.  Instead the response says “The process to sell the first allotment of bonds could take about XXXX”.

The voters have given the flood control district a blank check. No one knows what will happen in the next year much less 10 to 15 years out.

They should have insisted that if bonds were needed they would be approved by the voters in smaller chunks, say five years at a time.

Consider our case here in El Paso where in 2012 voters approved the issuance of $473 million in bonds for quality of life projects.  Six years later the majority of the money has not been spent.

We deserve better

Brutus

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Among the worst

August 28, 2018

The J. P. Morgan financial firm recently published a chart that shows the financial liabilities of the state and local governments with the worst rations of debt service requirements to revenue.

They put El Paso on the chart at about 42%.

From their report:

While there’s no hard and fast rule, municipalities with IPOD ratios over 30% may eventually face very difficult choices regarding taxation, non-pension spending, infrastructure investment, contributions to unfunded plans and bond repayment.

Tick-tock

We deserve better

Brutus

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Posted by Brutus

Fewer births

August 27, 2018

According to our county hospital’s June 2018 financial report,  births in the April to June quarter are down by 20% from the same quarter in 2016.

Can any of our readers help explain this to us?

We deserve better

Brutus

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Posted by Brutus

Unpaid bills

August 26, 2018

According to the city’s own numbers at the end of August 2017 our net pension liability was $540,851,229.

Our water utility had another $43,921,002 that it will owe their pension fund.

Add to that another $59,380,465 that the city categorizes as “unpaid absences” or sick and vacation pay that has been earned but not paid out to the employees.

That comes to over half of one year’s budget that we will have to come up with eventually.

We deserve better

Brutus

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Posted by Brutus

Simple numbers

August 25, 2018

Next year’s city budget comes in at $989 million.

Last year’s came to $896 million.

That works out to a 10% increase.

Did our population grow 10% last year?

2% is probably a realistic number.

How does the city budget grow?  It all comes down to taxes and fees.

We should all know who pays those.

Why are they spending 10% more money when we have only grown about 2%?

We deserve better

Brutus

 

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Posted by Brutus

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