08 April 2019

Is Mesa City Manager Now Punching-Above-His-Weight-Class In 2019??

Back in 2012 with former Mayor Scott Smith standing behind him, Chris Brady launched one of the first hard-fisted sales pitches for what was then the biggest $200M jab on the backs of Mesa taxpayers to pay for Municipal Debt Bond Obligations for the Republican Chicago Billionaire Ricketts Family to finance their "Field of Dreams" Sloan Park.
In 2016 taxpayers rejected a low-blow hit under-the-belt. In 2018 Brady came back with a series of blow-by-blow punches to score one more huge Debt Service obligation.
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Now in 2019 after almost 14 years on-the-job as the highest-paid salaried official inside City Hall, wielding more power as the City's Chief Executive than Mesa Mayor John Giles, he's making the rounds again in a series of presentations before the Mesa City Council that has the power and final approval on proposed budgets: FY2019/2020 and FY2020/24.
All the figures presented as "Power Points" are from the city's OMB working with a group from ASU. There is no other outside objective independent financial analysis, except from one group named Truth In Accounting . . . Furthermore, these jumbles of numbers on slide after slide take more time than  the typical one-day or two-day release to the public for study and examination. The City's Annual Financial Reviews are, likewise, not submitted in a timely manner in the usual 180-day time periodNonethelessss, in the most review by Truth in Accounting, they find Mesa's financing troublesome
What the report said in January 2019
> This

and This >

 
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Brady has so far this year tried to stay low-key, cool calm and collected wearing shirt-and-tie. He has put other salaried city officials from the Office of Management & Budget and the City Engineer in-the-hot seat at City Council Study Sessions and regular meetings. 
He might loosen-up in public appearances wearing an open-collar shirt [no tie] for what's usual "Casual Friday" attire. 

 Readers of this blog might like to note that there is no "Casual Friday' business code-of-dress - City offices are closed in the official 4/10 workdays per week . . . mebbe city employees like 3-day weekends! They certainly haven't gone back to working the normal five-days-a-week schedule changed during the Great Recession in 2018.You might remeber at earlier budget hearings, Chris Brady got really rattled over questions of forecasting and projections in proposed budgets. Looks like he's learned his lesson when it got ugly on live stream. Can't, however, say that won't happen this year  . . .  
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ICYMI: Here's a post using the same image above . . .If you want to take a look again at more details than those in this excerpt you can Click Here
THE NUMBERS IN THE CITY MANAGER'S PROPOSED FY2019/2010 and FY2020/2024 BUDGETS HAVE INCREASED
12 February 2019
Time-To-Pay > The-Pied--Piper Moment for Mesa City Manager Chris Brady
What does "he who pays the pied- piper" mean?
Looks like all those Pie-In-The-Sky schemes pushed by Mesa City Manager Chris Brady and the city's Office of Management & Budget during the past four years in that big beautiful "Grab-Bag-of-Goodies" for everybody that tricked Mesa taxpayers to go into more debt in the November 2018 ballot proposals are getting a heavy dose of REALITY . . . Better late than never
East Valley Tribune staff writer Jim Walsh barely hit the nail-on-the-head or scored any points to tell the public what's really going down here in Mesa. He covered "amenities" only, not getting a grip on the tough stuff that's hard to swallow:
Mesa voters approved virtually every sort of municipal amenity in last fall's
$196-million bond issue - from a new library and public safety station to athletic fields and walking paths to new parks and even a dog park . . . One important consideration in adding the new facilities is whether there is enough money available . . . "
WHOA!! Why worry now after all their projections and cost analysis  were wrong? 
"We are concerned as we get to the later part of it, when we deliver big parks and libraries, that will put a lot of strain on the budget"
-- City Manager Chris Brady
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SCAMMING THE VOTERS:
Not just so-called "amenties" - ASU is the bigger scam-scheme.
One new building ASU @ Mesa City Center estimated to cost $63,000,000 in preliminary fast-plans to get it started - a scaled -down $200-million "satellite ASU campus" that Mesa taxpayers rejected two years ago - now requires extensive investigation according to a City Council Report last week.


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