March 06, 2007

City on "the Bubble"

City Manager painted a very very bleak picture of the financial situation of the City of Worcester and described the City being on "the bubble". Little confused by some of the numbers but it sounded to me that between the School and City budgets, we are looking at a 20 million dollar deficit.

If there was any doubt, you can say goodbye to ORH via a long-term lease with options to renew at a nominal fee, but the operating deficit and debt service (I hope) will be picked up by the leasee (MassPort). Wonder if they will pay any real estate taxes on ORH? Is MassPort a non-profit?

Although I feel this will be an improvement, let me give you the real estate example I used yesterday. Assume you owned an apartment building that I managed. After collecting the rents and paying all the bills, it was costing you money every year and was really starting to drain your finances.

I find a person who will lease the building long-term at a nominal price each year, but agrees to cover any losses during the lease. Your first question would be how did I market your building? Maybe you would about any other offers??? If I told you that I did not market your building and only talked to this one buyer, would you be happy?

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

I was watching Worc News tonight and it had a piece on a wind farm at ORH last night. Mayor Lukes was interviewed and said that the wind farm was a good idea for the city but that the airport was not the correct stop for it. The clip also mentinoed that we could have commercial service by June?? Wouldn't that need to be announced soon if it were to happen? Maybe that will be when Massport takes over and the arrival of some new limited service.

Bill Randell said...

My bet is as soon as MassPort takes over, we will have commercial service.

Anonymous said...

...that's my bet , too ....although it would be any and all castoff service Logan doesn't want.... and most likely at the highest cost fares; Massport sucks!

Harry Tembenis
Worcester, MA

Anonymous said...

Massport is basically a monopoly. They have a monopoly on bridges, boston harbor, and almost a monoploy on air service from greater boston area.

Most monopolies do no have to compete and my position is that Massport has never had to really compete in the past.

ORH needs a competitive player who has millions of dollars at stake. This may be foreign to many people and disgusting to others, but we all know it's true: Money is the biggest (and maybe the best) motivator there is. Wanna get more production of something or someone....start dangling dollars in front of them or have them invest money in a venture.

Bill Randell said...

gringe:

That was why our main recommendation was to put together an RFP to privatize ORH and get someone like a National Express to come im.

I agree with many of your points, but as I see it right now MassPort will be an improvement--althought not exactly what we had wanted.

Bill

Anonymous said...

ORH-Bubblicious. Start printing up the bumper stickers.

Harry Tembenis
Worcester, MA

Anonymous said...

Check out boston.com. In the search section write in "worcester airport wind farm" and it should bring you to the 3/5/07 article on the news story Tim saw last night on TV. Couldn't find the video of the story though. Some interesting items. Surprised to see 65,000 flights out of Worcester.