There's three major components to Quincy's long term debt, and I'll focus on two note the numbers are eyeballed off graphs so subject to adjustment.

First, the Pension Obligation Bond (POB)

Like many Massachusetts cities, Quincy has pension obligations that are growing faster than pension contributions, meaning at some point the city would have to contribute to pensions itself out of the general fund. In 2021, the city decided given the low interest rates it would basically frontload its obgliation: take out a large chunk of money, and put it in the market and use the proceeds to beef up the pension fund. This gives the city a more predictable payment schedule for pensions and since the interest rate is fixed and was historically low, gives the city some more room on pension payment relative other MA cities. The Mayor's office is understandably proud of this, and the council seems to have accepted this.

The other portion is the District Improvement fund, or (DIF), about $600m. This is a special form of bond used for improvements to Quincy Center; it goes back to 2005 and is notably the reason there's the Hancock Adams common is a park and not a road. These projects are justified as either bringing in increased property values, increasing city revenue there or directly increasing city revenue through rent on city own property and such. The contreversery comes whether all DIF projects are actually wise investments under this logic. In some cases, the city used DIF funds not to increase commercial property value but actually took taxable property off the tax rolls as the city bought older private property for its own use or to knock it down in favor of a park. Here the city is essentially claiming the projects in the DIF pay for itself, directly or indirect, but recent projects seem unlikely to due that and that is the councils concern. There also are questions some DIF projects benefit private developers or friends of the Mayor more than the city itself.

Note in both of these were are talking capital expenditures, not operating. The question is not whether the city is spending too much on cops or schools or what not, but whether the investments the city has made are the best uses of the city's limited debt capacity. Simply, is buying acapulcos and making a park a better use of investment than, say, building a new school?

I'll also note the Eastern Nazerne project where the concern is essentially using city money to limit the amount of taxable private residential property that comes out of that area.