From the Fort Wayne News-Sentinel:
Two city councilmen are challenging Mayor Tom Henry's plan to eliminate a backlog of street repairs and other capital improvements within five years by borrowing $30 million.
Mitch Harper, R-4th, and Russ Jehl, R-2nd, are expected to present a “pay-as-you-go” alternative at Tuesday's meeting they say would save taxpayers millions of dollars in interest payments and limit city debt while adding only one year to the improvement schedule.
“After five years (under the city's proposal), there would still be $17 million left on the bond,” said Jehl, bristling at the prospect of taxpayers having to pay interest years after the projects have been completed.
Harper, meanwhile, said City Council's July decision to increase local income taxes by 0.35 percent created an “almost irresistible” temptation within the Henry administration to spend the “greater pot of money.”
In the four-year capital improvement plan outlined by Controller Pat Roller last month, issuance of the $30 million bond and another $21 million in cash payments would allow the city to make improvements that had been deferred because of a lack of funding. At the time, Roller estimated interest on the bond would be about 3 percent. Jehl estimated that interest would total about $4.8 million.
Instead, he and Harper would address the backlog by 2019 through the use of additional $3.5 million in economic development income taxes, limiting discretionary spending on planning and community development and by using money that would have gone to bond payments to make repairs. The plan would put $3 million more into street repairs in 2014 than the city has proposed, Harper and Jehl said.
Avoiding additional debt is important, they said, because even in the supposedly austere year of 2012 city debt increased 9 percent to $619 million.
...
http://www.news-sentinel.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20131001/NEWS/131009980/0/SEARCH
