I'm imagining it must have been a (plus) + 10s o'millions. After all, we're talking about a woman who can save the entire Republic.
You said it, Gomer.
And what do you know about quantity of scale as compared to scale of quantity? Obviously very little, if anything, of either.
Sam Walton is a lesson on how to exploit both with a simple three tier management model from the very top to the very bottom.
Wasilla’s debt did increase under Palin, but the Kilkenny chain letter being passed around by the left was seriously misleading and has been debunked.
1) As to the actual debt numbers:
“The city of Wasilla has made available all of its budgets during Palin’s tenure. So we grabbed the fiscal year ending 1996 (when Palin took the reins), which showed the city’s long-term debt at $1.12-million, mostly for paving and sewer projects.
“The annual financial report for fiscal year ending June 30, 2002 — Palin’s last year in office — shows that the total long-term debt was $24.8-million. So Kilkenny is off a bit when she says long-term debt went from zero to $22-million. But it did increase $23.7-million. “
2) As to the sequence of events that led to the above increase, several observations:
No increase of debt could be accomplished unilaterally by fiat of Palin. In reality the increase was a result of the town, as a town, choosing and voting to grow, and to buy the necessary infrastructure to succeed with that growth:
What is important to notice here is that it was Palin’s strong bent to fiscal conservatism that induced the town to grow in the first place, because it was her grasp, even way back then, of the properly limited role of government in supporting a healthy private sector that made the plan work. Indeed, using a combination of infrastructure improvements and other favorable business treatments to incentivize private sector businesses to relocate to Wasilla is a distinctly “fiscal conservative” thing to do, and all the good conservative governors in the lower 48 have used and are using similar strategies.
And Wasilla desperately needed to grow. Read Bristol Palin’s book “Not Afraid of Life,” and it becomes plain why. They were close enough to Anchorage that they should’ve been growing, but they weren’t, ostensibly because the town leadership didn’t have a clue and routinely wasted revenues on their pet, nonstarter, self-serving projects. Hence Palin’s early introduction to Crony Capitalism. Instead, they were a little nothing town with high property tax to support the incomes of town government. Sarah had become frustrated with their abuse of the people’s money and that was how she got to running for office in the first place.
And what do you get in these small rural towns that can’t grow? You get a youth culture afflicted with a boredom so intense it drags otherwise conservative communities into unhealthy preoccupations with alcohol and procreation. I know this because I live in one of those small rural towns and I know what they were dealing with first hand because we have the same problems here. Only we don’t have a Sarah Palin to get fed up with it and do something about it (Why not me? Yes, I am wrestling with that very question).
Enter the Sports Complex. If you’ve read the Palin books, you know that rural Alaska revolves around and stayed connected through a vibrant sports culture, and that having a major sports facility in a town A) puts a town on the cultural map, and therefore B) acts as a magnet to businesses that support the increased frequency and volume of activity in the town, C) improves family life by reducing the number of times a year conference athletes must travel hundreds of miles from home, and D) provides a nexus for youth activity and social life that gives them a healthy alternative to the more dangerous forms of rural boredom relief.
So it becomes clear why Palin, being responsive to the long-term needs and interests of the town, and understanding that no one individual in a small town like Wasilla could take on such a beneficial project by themselves, put the project idea before the people, and they agreed with her, eyes wide open, and voluntarily took it on.
As a result, about 57% of that 23.7M debt, roughly 14M, was debt the city took on voluntarily for the Sports Complex, for all the good reasons cited above (Admittedly, there were legal problems that raised the cost of the land above original expectations, but the town lawyer appears to be the culprit there, giving bad legal advice that was technically correct but did not account for unintended consequences of a third party trying to double deal on the property. Baaad lawyer.[say in voice of Lou Costello]) Most of the remainder of the 10M increase was due to a combination of the city voluntarily assuming debt to build infrastructure to draw new business, as well as the natural growth resulting from that plan actually working over the 8 year tenure of Palin as Mayor.
So, while some may be “concerned” over the raw debt numbers, said “concern” is misleading at best, because the increase in debt came in the context of planned, real growth in the town, with not only the consent but the good will of the governed, not unlike the increase in debt undertaken by a small, stagnant business that decides to take out a loan so it can grow. And if the business plan behind the loan works, and the debt can pay for itself with the resulting growth, then the risk was worth it, which appears to have been the case for the people of Wasilla. I further understand they are ahead of schedule on paying down the debt, due to corresponding growth in revenues.
Kudos, Mrs. Palin.