By Michael Mathews
Candidate – Cottonwood City Council
(August 1, 2018)
There have been a lot of numbers thrown around concerning how much debt the City of Cottonwood has. If you know the right places to look and can discern from that information, this is one way to do it.
The easiest and best way is to just ask the city finance department. This is what they have provided. Enterprise Debt: $29,097,734. General Fund Debt: $20,392,367. Pension Debt: $25,165,543. That adds up to $74,655,644. Almost $75 million. These are the latest numbers from the finance department. You can try to spin them anyway you want, it’s still a whopper of a number for a small town. Have you ever looked at your mortgage? Let’s say you buy a home for $250,000. You make a down payment of 20 percent of the price, $50,000, and you finance the remaining $200,000 over 30 years. If the interest rate on your mortgage is 4 percent, you’ll pay a total of $143,739 in interest over those 30 years. So you actually paid $393,739 for your home. Now imagine what the debt service is on several millions of dollars over time and what that number might look like. I’ll leave that for you to ponder.
The bottom line is, those who created and approved this debt have put its repayment squarely upon the shoulders Cottonwood residents.
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2 Comments
Excellent information. Thank you Michael for putting forth the truth in an easy to understand form. You seem to be about the only person that has a handle on the true situation of Cottonwood city’s financial status.
I certainly hope the voting citizens of Cottonwood are reading this and encouraging others to do so. I also hope for the sake of all that are subject to the consequences of the city counsel actions that they will vote for a responsible person such as yourself to help get that council back on a stable financial track.
Michael, you have certainly nailed it down to a place where ordinary folks can understand what the biggest issue is facing the city and in a larger way, this nation. The voters are asking for those elected to live up to the talking points they used during their candidacy and to give us all a fair shake. Instead what we get is the same people that created the problem remaining in office and to add insult to injury, they invite their cronies to get elected only to further their deceitful agenda. It is time for the voters to ask a simple question. “Is this the way I would spend my hard-earned money?’ If not, then why are you permitting these same culprits to remain in office and spend it for you? Even a second grader would understand that this is a form of socialism that should never be permitted in the halls of the Cottonwood City Council. I wish you the best and hope that the citizens of Cottonwood will do an about-face and support and elect the right people to the Council.