Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

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Aniversario

From the Babalu Blog,

Today marks one year that the Castro regime encarcerated at least 75 political prisoners in what can only be understood as a means of stifling opinion and information on the island. These prisoners of conscience, through mock trials – guilty without the regime’s need to prove their guilt – have been sentenced to in some cases over 20 years merely for bringing the Cuban people information about the world outside their Elba.

Read also this very good commentary by Duncan Currie

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https://faustasblog.com/2004/03/19/

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Hair-raising

Both today’s headlines at The Principality’s community newspaper, School Board Proposes $62.1 Million Budget For the 2004-05 Year and Disputed Tulane Street Project Moves Forward, continue to drive home the hair-raising possibilities of further expenses.

The school budget, they wail, “is continually forced to tack on unfunded mandates, which leaves little or no money for local spending”, and “This year’s budget will only contain Level I spending, which includes expenditures needed to maintain programs. No Level II spending, which would pay to expand programs or add new ones will be part of the budget”.

Forgive me while I play the world’s smallest violin, but my husband and I have lived for years making sure we have an emergency fund for “maintaining programs” — avoiding getting into debt, making sure the house is well maintained, not spending money frivolously, and, when doing any project on the house itself, keeping in mind that any construction can (and often does) end up being 25% more expensive than projected. All the while, the taxpayers are, thanks to local overspending, “continually forced to tack on unfunded mandates”, which are endless.

The schools now need more money: $500,000 will be used to furnish the schools, even when that cost was supposed to be covered by the $100 million bond issue for the construction project but unforeseen costs ate up that money, and $103,000 on top of that will be eaten up by construction delays. “Neither of these costs will affect taxes” in The Principality, said the Board Secretary. Why am I doubtful?

The second article reminds us that, on top of the $18-19 million spent on the Library, there’s the $1.3 million library plaza. The library plaza, BTW, is more or less the size of a basketball court (no, you won’t be able to play basketball there), and yes, it is public space in the middle of prime real estate.

But the article is not about that.

The article’s about Phase II of the Downtown Development Project. Phase I is the 5-story parking-garage-built-on-the-stream, (Building A). Phase II is a 5-story mixed use building with 53 apartments (Building C). No mention of Building B in the article. All of this abecedary construction is, again, subsidized by the taxpayer, in prime real estate, developed by a former Borough Council member without the benefit of public bidding, and won’t pay taxes (instead there’s “in lieu of taxes” stuff in the works). It all comes down to some $13-14million for now, at least that’s the amount of the bond issue (not to be confused with the $100 school bond).

At least the opposition making noises. On a letter to the editor, “Redevelopment Project” Led Inexorably to Huge Tax Increase, the attorney for Concerned Citizens of The Principality points out that the parking-garage-built-on-the-stream was completed before there was a final judicial ruling on the legality of the bond issue. He raises the question “the Borough may find itself wondering what to do with illegally-issued bonds that financed the 5-story” parking-garage-built-on-the-stream.

Hair raising, indeed.

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https://faustasblog.com/2004/03/17/

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Slow Reading

Today’s headline: Library moving date could face revision. Opening may be pushed back a week.

One of the public works projects that The Principality has saddled its taxpayers with is the new resplendent Public Library. Appropriately, the new library was scheduled to open on April Fool’s Day; March 21 was the scheduled moving date, but it has been changed to March 28, since, according to the article, “the library is awaiting its temporary Certificate of Occupancy”. The opening date would then be April 8.

(Temporary CO?). No explanation is given as to why the CO is on hold (or why it is temporary).

The library is presently at The Principality Shopping Center, where you can find any materials you may need if your needs are modest (what you would expect from a local public library), in a perfectly adequate space that was formerly occupied by two bookstores. It is small, conveniently located next to the gym and the supermarket, and, most importantly, there’s plenty of free parking space. Conveniently enough that the number of visitors increased by 25% in the new location.

The new library was expected to cost $12million when it was first proposed, but by now the number is $18-19million.

The library originally anticipated a December 2003 opening but a survey error resulted in the installation of footing 6 inches lower than called for in design plans and the opening date was set back to February of this year. Construction then suffered from harsh winter weather that forced the library to push back the opening date again.

The new building is big, located downtown in the middle of prime commercial real estate, where parking is either not available or to be found in the soon-to-be-completed parking-building-built-on-the-stream.

I called the Shopping Center management office and was told that the amount of the current monthly rent “is not public information”. A quick Google search showed that the rent is estimated at $20,000/month, and, may I point out, in a commercial space for which the landlord takes care of the maintenance and pays taxes to the community. Compare that to the $75,000/month (my estimate: 5% interest divided by 12 months x $18,000,000) debt service, which doesn’t include maintenance costs, for a building that will never pay taxes, on a prime location. Another question also arises, since the parking building’s grand opening was scheduled to take place in tandem with the Library’s, does this mean the parking building’s opening will be delayed further, so there’s no parking revenue that week?

Still, the article assures us “if the extra time is required, it is not likely to exceed the library’s project budget”.

“Not likely”. Let’s hope.

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https://faustasblog.com/2004/03/16/