Letter to the Editor: 'Boot the Bond'

Letter to the Editor,

During Mayor Jere Wood’s state of the city address to the Kiwanis Club last week he finally admitted to piloting Roswell’s ship of state with 88,000 aboard too close to the rocks and he will be unable to keep his ship from running aground financially.

You can expect Mayor Wood and Roswell's City Council to begin throwing some tall tantrums challenging property owners with city employee lay-offs and reductions in service unless taxpayers open up their check books and bail out his administration with an injection of bond monies, thus placing Roswell property owners deeper in debt. This is the same group of financially irresponsible elected officials who spent $30 million more than the city received in revenues over the last three years alone.

The proposed $24 million bond is totally unnecessary. There will be $4 million in excess reserves as of July 1, 2012.  There also currently exists an additional $14 million in sustainability reserves and an additional $5 million in the Solid Waste fund. That is a total of $23 million in cash in the bank totally unallocated.  This is taxpayers’ dollars that must be utilized before we give this administration and city council one penny more. These financial numbers are all spelled out on page 34 and 35 in the fiscal year 2012 budget which can be found on line on the city's website. (See attached PDF)

What this mayor and council are betting on is that the public will approve this bond; then as the mayor stated during his “state of the city address,” the sustainability reserves of $14 million that currently afford the city a AAA bond rating, would no longer need to be maintained and this $14 million could be spent down by a reserve policy change authorized  with his signature. That is the only way he can avoid a ship wreck during the next two years.

In essence, once the city has leveraged itself to the hilt with the proposed $24 million by utilizing all the bonding capacity available without a millage rate increase, there would be absolutely no reason to maintain such a reserve margin and the Wood administration could spend the $14 million to maintain the current level of spending, which has averaged $8 million more than the city takes in revenue for the last four years. Long-term, this approach means after the city has leveraged itself to the hilt, spends all of its cash reserves, that a property tax increase cannot be avoided after the 2013 election.

Yet there is a way to steer clear of this impending financial ship wreck without additional debt. In early 2015 the existing bond will mature and there will be $5 million annually in excess revenues by rolling over the existing bond millage rate into the general fund. This practical analysis was conducted by the city’s Finance Department in 2008.

Candidly, as stated by Senator Chip Rogers, once the chairman of the state of Georgia Finance Committee, “A Bond referendum is nothing more than the moral failure to reduce expenditures.”

I say “Boot the Bond” and let the captain go down with the ship!

There is a silver lining if voters defeat this bond proposal thus demanding the city live within its means, whereby revenues would determine expenditures.

Lee Fleck

Roswell