All over my state I’m seeing these absurdly high dollar “Bond Proposition A” items having come up for a vote and being passed in EVERY town and county as roads or schools improvements.
Who’s pushing these? What’s the total amounts for them by state?
There are multi-hundred million proposals getting floated by small towns for what?
This is all in an off-year and they’re getting passed by absurdly low vote tallies.
A 800 million bond will be passed by 1200 votes for a town of 18000. This is happening in small towns, counties, everywhere! It seems like it’s almost happening in all of them. Not normal sized bonds, either. Way out of scope for what should be reasonably expected, as if everyone is quadrupling their infrastructure all at once.
DIG.
Pick a state, list the location and the bond size, list the voting results. I’ll try to keep tallies here.
Edit: Found a site https://bondbuyer.com/news/bond-vote-all-billion-plus-bond-deals-pass
“As usual, voters approved the lion’s share of bond issuances put before them…”
Maybe it shouldn’t come as a shock that some vulture is sitting around waiting for these things to get approved en-masse so they can swoop in and buy up our chains.
Is any of this out of line?
I’m intentionally looking at smaller states. California and New York are surely a mess. Texas, Florida, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Ohio are as well, doubtless.
Maybe Indiana would be a good mid-sized state to look at?
New Mexico is #38 and clocking in with almost a billion early on from a population of 2.1 million. Anyone with a good list of every county like the New Mexico SOS has? Looking these up through local newspapers is no fun.
Oregon
https://results.oregonvotes.gov/ResultsList.aspx
New Mexico Rio Rancho General Obligation Bond: 80 million Rio Rancho SB9: 33 million (over 6 years) Albuquerque Public Schools: 265 million Central New Mexico Community College: 80 million Albuquerque City Bond: 39 million Albuquerque City Parks: 35 million Albuquerque Aquatic Center: 35 million New Mexico Water Conservation, system modernization, sewers, streets, libraries and museums: 104 million Santa Fe Schools: 55 million Vaughn MSD: 2.4 million Espanola PSD: 40 million (2135 votes) Raton PSD: 88 million (1301 votes) Taos PSD: 9 million (131 people voted one bond, 733 voted another, 3411 voted another. Wtf?) Colfax County 15.8 million (65 votes for one 1 million bond)
https://electionresults.sos.state.nm.us
Tally: 881 million
Some of the measures (eg San Juan county) include voting on how schools are funded rather than direct bonds. Interesting that there’s a say in that, now. Has that been put to a vote before?
Pennsylvania
https://www.wtae.com/article/pennsylvania-election-results-2023/45752251
South Dakota Rock Valley School District (966 students): 25 million, 79% yea Schaller-Crestland School District (396 students): 15.75 million, 64% yea West Sioux School District (879 students): 15.5 million, 73% yea Sioux Falls School District (): 190 million (bond from 2018)
Tally: 241.25 million