Jahn Interview

1. CITY SQUARE PROGRESS IN 2008 ?


I will stick my neck out here

We absolutely, will not see any new construction in 2008

CS has a "progress payment" due June, 2008 of $750K. I predict this will be modified, moved to a future date, and /or reduced. The city has no choice, as CS holds all the cards. He who owns the gold makes the rules. Ask your self what are the realistic options for the city if things do not fall into place soon? CS is on the hook now for $250K. They can easily walk away from this and pay any other penalties and be unscathed .

So they probably get off the hook temporarily for the June payment of $750K and in exchange agree to commence razing the parking garage. Anyone see any parking garages listed on Ebay or any Craigs List curb alerts for a free parking garage in Worceser?


2. FINANCIAL PICTURE ?


DISMAL.

The city is having major problems meeting its daily operational costs. Witness this years budget debacle that wasnt settled until October. I will go out on a limb here and say that the 2009 budget is going to be even worse. Mr OBrien will be unable to concentrate on other issues because he'll be too overwhelmed by the budget. The state has a $1B deficit for the current year we're in now, so how much help can we expect from Beacon Hill for 2009. I am not an advocate for help from Beacon Hill. The city should pay its own freight

Should we even be taking state and federal money? We're too quick to grab the upfront cash and not look at the consequences five or ten years down the road.

We are a $500M dollar business but we do not operate in a business like fashion. The examples are too munerous to mention and I'd just be mostly repeating myself. But regardless, here's one I saw I the other day. Traffic "Control" Cameras. Rather then buy the cameras, pay to have them installed, and realize 100% of the traffic fine proceeds...we instead tout this idea as costing us nothing to implement (per T&G, per Mr Petty) and we give a portion of the fines collected to the owners (?)/installers of these devices. This is crazy, but it's done because we dont have the money to pay to install the units so instead we pay for the so called free installation by granting the installers/( owners?) an annuity for how long?? This is analgous to me paying for a photocopier by allowing Canon to charge me on a per copy basis, rather than just buying the thing upfront and paying for it myself.

Also, keep in mind the City is BANKRUPT. We have a pension obligation to current and future retirees of $120M. That's $120M that we would have to come with Today to place into the pension fund and earn investment returns to pay future obligations. Don't even ask what the future obligation is to fund health care for these same retirees or to fund the sick days that employeees have accumaluted during their tenure with the city.

One might ask, "Well gee I just read in the paper that our debt ratings are good/improving" Well the way we accomplish that is the pension "company" is kept on another set of books called something like the Worcester Retirement System. In other words the obligation has been moved off the city books. Out of sight and out of mind.




3 BIGGEST CITY MISTAKE?


The council and to a lesser extent the school committee, because they are a political body, have allowed the city to be hi-jacked by city employees and labor interests and this is going eventually push us over the edge. There are 5300 city employees. They dont all live in the city, but you have to realize that in their totality (especially when you consider these employees and their immediate families), they represent a huge voting block and people vote their pocketbooks and their spouses pocketbook first and foremost.

We are not getting efficient use of our tax dollars when trash collectors are working 4 to 4.5 hour work days, when the average city employee takes 10 sick days per year, and when no one knows what it is costing us to provide city services.
We should be able to tell with just a few keystrokes what it costs us annually, monthly, daily and hourly to provide custodial serices for the library, to collect trash, to operate the vice squad,etc,etc.

We should be looking into privatization of city services but it will never happen because too many politicians would be run out of office by the city labor voting block. The Worcester Municipal Reasearch Bureau continually makes recommendations to the council and school committte and they are ignored. One that comes to mind is to privatize school custodial services. Mr Caradonio says this would upset the family of school department employees. Mindsets like this is what will eventually result in receivership.

4. IF I COULD CHANGE ONE THING IN WORCESTER ( I am going to name two) ?


a. Put as many city services out to bid as possible.

I would hire an outside agency to come in and INDEPENDENTLY FINANCIL EXPERTS assess EXACTLY what it costs to provide all city services and then put out to bid as many of these services as possible. The bids would be awarded and initially monitiored by ANOTHER INDEPENDENT AGENT. None of this baloney of having department heads low ball their costs so they can maintain their power and turf. Obviously not all services lend themselves to privatization.


b. Term limit councillors to either two or four years ( one to two terms). This will prevent them from doing things that help them get re-elected as opposed to doing what right for taxpayers.

5. STRONG MAYOR ?

I am ABSOLUTELY DEAD SET against a strong mayor. Changing the political organizational structure does nothing to address our underlying municipal problems which are operational and financial in nature. Many will point to Boston and Providence as examples of a successful strong mayor, but these comparisons are flawed because these are capitol cities, seaports, and are served by MAJOR, MULTIPLE TWO DIGIT interstate road systems. Worcester is only directly served by one 3 digit connector interstate. Road growth equals economic growth. Then there is also Springfield (in receivership) which no one seems to be using as an example of a viable mayoralty

Strong mayoral cities also seem to attract what i call lunch bucket, democratic mayoral types. Witness Menino and Cianci. I really dont know much about Marino in Springfield. This notion that strong mayors are somehow responsible for the economic viablity of their city is ludicrious. Mayors do not make citieswhat they are . No one person is that powerful. Private industry and private money drives economic success. Just because Providence Place happened on Ciancis watch or because Bostons skyline improves and grows on Meninos watch does not mean that they as strong mayors had anything to do with it. They just got lucky and happened to have things occur on their watch.

All municipalities have some corrpution. It's probably inevitable. Strong mayors seem to breed more corrpution and more nepotism. Not that it doesnt happen here in Worcester to some extent, but strong Mayors who are popularly elected tend to put their unqualified or less qulaified cronnies into municipal management positions.