Sunday, October 12, 2008

Troubles for municipal bond market

The MRJs George Moore wrote this story on a multi-faceted financial problem facing Cheshire:

While bonded debt is the lifeblood of municipal construction projects, cities and towns are hesitant to issue new bonds these days because of volatile financial markets, experts said last week.

Some towns, like Cheshire, are in a state of uncertainty as bond sale dates approach. Cheshire had planned to borrow roughly $10 million this December to cover sewer and general government projects, said Deputy Finance Director James Jaskot.

If the market is still unfavorable at that time, the town might be better off selling a short-term borrowing note and bonding later, Spoerndle said.


And beyond the recent Wall Street meltdown, there have been other problems for new muni issuances that I've been following this whole year... though I think it's fair to say that all the problems are somewhat related.

Tim White

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

State and local governments will be forced to delay nonessential projects until 2009 or scrap them all together.

Reality. Deal with it.

Anonymous said...

It's time for the TM and the 5 Dems of the council to face reality. All capital items should be cancelled.

As for Altieri's turf, it should only be done if Altieri raises all the money privately and funds future replacements with private money. It's amazing how important things are when someone else is paying for it. Maybe he could get the teachers to contribute their 4.3% increase.

Anonymous said...

Forget Altieri's turf field - if the council majority won't redirect the $525,000 to the pool and if they refuse to return the money to the State, then it should be used to demolish and rebuild the concession stand and bathrooms at the CHS field. Have you seen how horrible the bathrooms are there? They're disgusting. Spend the money on rebuilding that building and if there's any left over, tar that sidewalk that leads to the field. And if there's any money left over after that, fix up the announcer's booth at the top of the bleachers. That ought to use up the 1/2 million.