This story in The Herald-Sun is an admission that our current Durham County Board of Commissioners is a collection of incompetent dolts.
With bills coming due for its new courthouse and human-services building, the county is opening its fiscal 2013-14 budget process with roughly a $16 million difference between projected revenue and spending.
County Manager Mike Ruffin on Friday told County Commissioners that “over 90 percent of that” $16 million is related to the need to increase debt payments.
He and other administrators also noted that the county opted to launch construction of its new buildings with short-term financing, which avoided for a time the need to make large debt payments.
It now has to shift to long-term loans, which will carry a higher interest rate.
Like the irresponsible people who took out huge ARM home loans in the housing bubble with no hope of paying them off when the balloon payment came, these miscreants did the same thing with their ambitious building projects. Just as it was extremely dumb for people to over-extend on their home loans, it was doubly dumb for people who are supposed to be stewards of taxpayer money to over-extend during a recession/depression.
County Manager Mike Ruffin said, “We have a challenging year ahead of us because the debt wall is here,” but there’s no challenge. Whenever you can just take money out of the taxpayer’s pocket to pay for your mistakes, that’s not a challenge. A challenge for this crew would be being smart enough to know when to go out on a fiscal limb and when not to.
Face it guys, you blew it and we’re going to have to pay. Which is the way it always is with you high-handed know-it-alls.