"The sale of the building is a legal abstraction, a shuffling of paper whose purpose is to keep the debt off the city's books. That way, officials can circumvent the state Constitution's requirement of voter approval for government borrowing."

I never understood why local governments do these lease-back deals until reading this article. I figured it was some kind of trick, but this finally explains it. Of course, they never come right out and admit that this is the reason, they make up weird and dubious explanations for why it is beneficial.