EDITORIAL: Shekarchi Rightfully Shoots Down McKee’s Citizens Deal
EDITORIAL
EDITORIAL: Shekarchi Rightfully Shoots Down McKee’s Citizens Deal
As GoLocal editorialized a week ago, the deal lacked strategy, was fiscally deficient, and smelled of an unvetted insider deal.
McKee’s plan was to buy a building from Citizens Bank at twice the amount that the building was being assessed for by the City of East Providence.
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Let’s walk through McKee’s math:
- McKee submitted a budget amendment to pay Citizens Bank $33.67 million.
- East Providence has assessed the value at $16.94 million.
- This is at a time when the value of most office buildings is being downgraded by 40% or more.
So, let’s be generous to the Governor and say there is a whisper of demand for a bank building in the Riverside section of East Providence, and someone would pay $10 million for the building.
Thus, the Governor was only wasting $23 million or so.
This, coupled with the disastrous financing of the Tidewater Landing minor league soccer stadium in Pawtucket, raises real concern about the fiscal thinking in the McKee Administration.
The privately OWNED stadium is going to cost, according to bond documents, about $137 million, and somehow, due to the disastrous financing scheme perpetrated by McKee’s Commerce Corporation — taxpayers will pay more than $132 million over the next 30 years In bond payments.
McKee’s management of high-cost public finance projects really has to be under question.
One would say McKee is wasting money like a drunken sailor, but we don’t want to besmirch drunken sailors.
At least the sailors had a good time.