City commission to discuss bond swaps
BY PUBLIUS / OCTOBER 17, 2019
This article is satirical. It refers to an item on tonight’s City Commission agenda allowing GRU to “negotiate and execute the listed transactions [to amend existing bond swap agreements] within the prescribed execution parameters and timeframes.”
Three weeks ago the bearded bosses who lead the self-proclaimed “most diverse City Commission in history” offered the public a smorgasbord of unprecedented utility rate hikes and across-the-board fee increases topped with a property tax millage rise equaling 600% of the year’s consumer price index rise. Three dozen residents, GRU customers, and advocates for the poor begged and pleaded with the bosses to change the menu. To no avail.
What do the bosses–two just returned from Black Sea and Pacific island jaunts–plan to force feed the public this evening?
The entrée is a resolution authorizing the bearded sub-boss of GRU over the next 11 months to partner with Wall Street bond underwriters and derivatives peddlers to negotiate and sell $1.5 billion of exotic debt–the largest debt issuance in Florida municipal utility history.
What are the risks? The costs?
Don’t ask.
Shut up and eat your gruel.