Do y’all read ElPasoSpeak.com? Old Brutus is a bulldog. I know he looks like a Rottweiler, but really he’s a bulldog.
Wednesday’s post calls attention to something of which I was previously unaware. The bonds issued to finance Southwest University Ballpark, home of MountainStar Sports Group’s Chihuahuas, comes with a bullet payment due in 2023 of $17 million.
Of course, it’s expected that the City will refinance that $17 million sometime before it’s due. Until 2023, the City will only pay interest on the bonds, and no principal.
You can find it all here in the City of El Paso’s Downtown Development Corporation’s powerpoint titled Summary of Ballpark Financing. This is likely the model that the City’s CFO Dr. Mark Sutter was referring to when he said “I told council ‘I don’t think you ever saw the actual results of the financing compared to the models. It’s not a pretty sight.”
That’s okay, of course, because El Paso’s economic prospects are looking up.
Not.
According to this story in the El Paso Times, El Paso dropped to No. 121 (from No. 53 in 2014) in the latest Milken Institute Best-Performing Cities rankings. This marks the first time in the last eight years that El Paso has dropped out of the top half of the 200 best performing economies in the United States.
You know what you call someone who takes out an interest-only loan when his economic prospects are declining?
Bankrupt.