UCCF 12/2/21: $49 Million Borrowing

Ordinance:

Municipal Budgets 2021 (5) Debt Rankings

Per Capita, Linden has the largest debt payment and (after Winfield which has no debt) Hillside has the smallest debt payment in 2021.

Paying For Solar Panel Fiasco

832-2021 ORDINANCE AUTHORIZING THE GUARANTY BY THE COUNTY OF UNION, NEW JERSEY OF PAYMENT OF PRINCIPAL AND INTEREST ON THE COUNTY GUARANTEED REVENUE BONDS, SERIES 2021 (RENEWABLE ENERGY PROGRAM PROJECT) OF THE UNION COUNTY IMPROVEMENT AUTHORITY IN AN AGGREGATE PRINCIPAL AMOUNT NOT EXCEEDING $5,500,000.

This represents the bonds that the UCIA still has to pay on that solar panel boondoggle that anybody could see were destined to default . Here are comments made on the ordinance and a little background as gleaned from the EMMA website.

Harboring Section 20 Costs

New Jersey’s Local Bond Law includes this section:

40A:2-20. Expenses included in cost
The cost of an improvement or property may include interest on obligations until the end of the fiscal year in which the obligations are issued or until 6 months after the completion of construction or acquisition, and architect’s fees, accounting, engineering and inspection costs, legal expenses, costs of authorizing, selling and issuing obligations, preliminary planning, test and survey expenses, and a reasonable proportion of the compensation and expenses of employees of a local unit in connection with the construction or acquisition of such improvement or property.

Municipalities can borrow for road repairs or to buy vehicles and other equipment apparently without voter or state approval as long as they pass an ordinance saying what they are going to spend the money on. Kenilworth has been doing that regularly over the years.

Here is a summary of those ordinances and what they were supposed to go for along with a listing of how much of that money, based on check registry data, went to Harbor Consultants for Section 20 costs.

UCCF 4/8/21: UCIA Cashing In

Apparently Instagram and Facebook experienced a short outage today. Here is how it looked at the commissoner zoom meeting:

Up now so here are the Bruce Paterson questions and answers (mine coming tomorrow):

UCCF 3/25/21

Tomorrow more on parks and jail racism but for now here are the agenda items:

Ordinance and Resolutions mentioned:

UCCF 11/5/20: Prosecutor Ruotolo, Bonding, & Resolutions

There was a little back and forth on a patronage hire costing taxpayers some money.

Eliciting this ad hominem response:

More on more borrowing and more spending:

Next UCIA Boondoggle

With an urgent need for money to repay solar panel bonds, provide sinecures, and whatever else comes to Sullivan’s mind the Union County Improvement Authority (UCIA) needs big-ticket projects. Most towns are not sufficiently compliant to sell out taxpayers so it has fallen to the county to come through and they have again.

The next big project is going to be here :

The property that is subject of the RFQ/P is owned by the County of Union and is located at 61-99 West Grand Street and designated as Block 6, Lot 1589 on official tax map of the City of Elizabeth (the “Project Area”).

.

.
And it will be:

Bond Ordinance – 2019

Whatever Union County can’t get from raising taxes as much as is allowable under the tax cap and stealing Open Space taxes they bond for each summer. They will do it again tomorrow and this year’s number is $48,560,397.

UCCF 8/17/17: $50 Million Bonding Details

787-2017: BOND ORDINANCE TO AUTHORIZE THE MAKING OF VARIOUS PUBLIC IMPROVEMENTS AND THE ACQUISITION OF NEW ADDITIONAL OR REPLACEMENT EQUIPMENT AND MACHINERY, NEW ADDITIONAL FURNISHINGS, NEW COMMUNICATION AND SIGNAL SYSTEMS EQUIPMENT, NEW INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS EQUIPMENT AND NEW AUTOMOTIVE VEHICLES AND A NEW FIRE ENGINE, INCLUDING ORIGINAL APPARATUS AND EQUIPMENT, IN, BY AND FOR THE COUNTY OF UNION, STATE OF NEW JERSEY, TO APPROPRIATE THE SUM OF $72,389,463 TO PAY THE COST THEREOF, TO APPROPRIATE STATE GRANTS, MONEYS FROM THE COUNTY CLERK’S TRUST ACCOUNT AND A CONTRIBUTION FROM UNION COUNTY COLLEGE, TO MAKE A DOWN PAYMENT, TO AUTHORIZE THE ISSUANCE OF BONDS TO FINANCE SUCH APPROPRIATION AND TO PROVIDE FOR THE ISSUANCE OF BOND ANTICIPATION NOTES IN ANTICIPATION OF THE ISSUANCE OF SUCH BONDS.

.

Detail on appropriations: