Bonds and Parking

Thank you to the Town Press for posting information on Nextdoor.com regarding the upcoming Town Council meeting whereby residents can voice concerns about the Redevelopment Commission floating a few million dollars in bonds to build a parking garage.

I am by no means an expert in public finance, so to the experts out there, please accept my apologies.

That said, I can't help but wonder why it is that our Town sees the need to run such a convoluted deal. If the Town wants to publicly finance a parking garage, they should do so in as much of a straight-forward manner as possible . . . preferably by raising a visible and dedicated tax (so that people know what they're paying for the things they get).

Contrarily, if the Town doesn't want to publicly fund a parking garage, don't fund a parking garage.

This isn't long division. We don't need some sort of a convoluted lend/lease deal that completely hides who benefits from the deal.

If you're going to fund something, fund it openly and honestly. If not, don't do it. By all means, though, if you're going to fund stuff, don't obfuscate to the point of incoherence such that your citizens/taxpayers (you know, those actually paying the bills) can't understand what is going on.

UPDATE: Full disclosure, I should note that I am an attorney and, to some degree, understand what the legal notice is getting at. Nonetheless, I stand by my original point that it should not require a law degree to understand what one's elected officials are doing with public money.