I also wonder how much interest you end up paying over the life of these loans normally. Does interest end up equating than more than the cost of the original loan like with a 30-year home mortgage? If so, that’s no small amount of money that we would be passing up.

I’m hoping that I misunderstood that, since there is clearly no rush here. The buildings are old and will be old a month or a year from now. And there clearly are also a lot of outstanding questions. The power point presentation on Thursday night did not include dollar amounts of how much was actually spent on each project, apart from a few from memory in response to questions, nor details about how much was originally allocated for each project. It’s not part of the power point that we were told would be available on the website and which I can’t find either.

There also used to be, by the way, a detailed update on bond spending from mid-2008 in powerpoint that was on the City website, but I can no longer find it either (though I do have notes I took). That would also be very helpful to have still available. We were well into the bond spending at that point and, as I recall anyway, it was still being projected that all projects would be completed within budget by the end of 2009. This is such a dramatic and costly turnaround, that I’m hoping that what the City Commission is doing Tuesday is pausing to dig in and find out what happened.

Prior Projects:
1) Did we get a good value for the money spent? That is to say, is the completed project worth what we ended up paying for it?
2) Should we have spent the money on the project? This is to say, was the decision to start, alter or prioritize a project a good one?

Future Projects:
3) Are the new set of projects likely to provide a good value for the money? Will our city managers insure that the project is completed for a fair price?
4) Are the new set of project appropriate and timely now?

1) and 3) fall to city managers; 2) and 4) fall to city commissioners.

So, do you feel good about the first 16m? If not, where do you place your concerns?

For my part, I’d like to dig into the numbers a bit more. Given the issues with the first 16m, taking a few weeks to reflect can’t hurt.

So far, I’m having a hard time finding the city managers report from last week online (also I need the project cost spreadsheet they tried to find during the meeting). I’m sure it’s right there, but I could use a link.