Monday, September 12, 2005
Blue Back Financing
In the latest article by Tom Puleo of the Hartford Courant (http://www.courant.com/news/local/fv/hc-whdbbs0910.artsep10,0,1613243.story) it looks as if the town and Blue Back Square have received financing. This seems like a huge risk by the financiers with the CT State Supreme Court set to review some of the current lawsuits. With continued vigilance, I have made a Freedom of Information Act request from Mr. Feldman to review all documentation around the financing. Please look here for more information soon.
Remember the election is November 8, 2005. Elect Mark Sinatro and Steve Sinatro for the town council and Libby Spinella for the Board of Educaiton.
Thanks
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This was sent to all Town Council members.... they declined to read it into the record 9/13/05 when they discussed zoning of the Bishops Corner library re: expansion.
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I am under the understanding, based on comments made by Mr. Verrengia, that $2 million dollars from the $48 million dollar Blue Back Square bonding will be used to finance the Bishop's Corner library expansion and renovation.
May I remind you that according to Mr. Francis himself - you cannot do that.
On 7/1/04 at the Blue Back public hearing (pages 18-19), Mr. Francis stated very clearly, that the rules of the bond ordinance say that you have to specify exactly the project you are going to spend it on, and if it isn't listed on the Bond ordinance then you couldn't spend it for something else. So for instance if you only spent $2 million on the proposed $7 million dollar renovation to Town Hall, you couldn't take the excess authorized $5 million and spend it on another project. This question was asked a few times in different ways and the answer had been the same all along.
The Bond Ordinance that we all approved never mentioned the Bishop's Corner library addition, and Bishop's Corner is not part of Blue Back Square, or it's revenue stream, at least not that I am aware of. Just because we are moving the senior center there does not make it part of the project either. If we use bonding money, General Obligation bonds, to pay for non-Blue Back related projects, then there will be no true revenue stream tied to paying back that bonding, as projects like the Bishop's Corner library will not provide a revenue stream to pay back the bonding. Even if you create a separate bond for the library addition, how will we pay for that? Also if it was known back then that the seniors would bemoved to Bishop's Corner and an addition was necessary why wasn't that discussed at the time?
According to the Public Hearing of 6/16/04 (page 25) there never was a clear plan for the Town Hall building, even though they estimated $7 million for it's renovation (page 56). It actually went from $9 million to $7 million in cost. On 7/14/04 Barry Feldman stated quite clearly (pages 57-61) that he couldn't say how much the renovation will cost, and that the $7 million was only an "authorized amount" and that bonding has two steps: authorization and appropriation. Mr. Connors clarified by saying that "what we spend on the building is the same as what we issue the bond for". Barry Feldman then concurred with that statement and basically said we didn't have to spend the whole $7 million. I don't think we should either. We could save ourselves a lot of money if we don't spend the entire authorized amount.
Please let's keep true to what have been the public's understanding of how we are financing these projects. I sincerely hope that we are not going to start playing games with that bonding money. If we don't use the entire $48 million on Blue Back then let's be real about that and create a separate bonding to pay for non Blue Back related projects, and figure out how we will pay that back. The Bishop's Corner library is not part of Blue Back Square and should not be funded with money from that project.
Respectfully,
Judy Aron,
40 North Quaker Lane
West Hartford
860-523-7257
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