Personal finances in a rocky state
By JOSH RESNEK
The mayor admitted on Bloomberg Radio’s Bay State Business Hour during a live interview last week that the city’s economy and bank account is a bit like his own.
“Not only am I concerned about the casino, I myself have rents due and employees to pay with nothing coming in,” he told interviewer Joe Shortsleeve.
“What’s the status of your four Honey Dew Donut locations?” Shortsleeve asked the mayor.
“I’m down to three locations,” he answered.
“Its slow. People aren’t out. A lot of our customers are staying home and are working from home,” he added.
“I’m hurting. Big rents to pay. Lots of overhead. Not lots of customers coming in. Doesn’t add up as a recipe for success. Very shortly, I won’t be able to stay in business.”
The mayor was asked if he had applied for an SBA loan.
“Yes,” he said. “I haven’t received any word yet but it should help, what, for eight weeks maybe. It’s very hard to maintain employees for coffee shops with no customers coming into them.”
Shortsleeve asked the mayor if and when things got back to normal whether or not he would still own three donut shops.
“That’s up in the air. Probably not,” the mayor said. “I’m too busy being a full time mayor,” he said.
“When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade out of them,” he said.
He revealed that Encore Boston Harbor hasn’t paid two quarters of its $30 million tab to the city.
“Without that money we have an inability to maintain services we have now,” he said.
In addition, it was announced after the interview that taxpayers are being given extra time to pay their property taxes until the emergency is over without interest charges or penalties.
He said the city’s number of infected is continuing to rise, that very little testing is going on in Everett
“Of course I’m concerned about Encore. They have said they will pay two quarters at once shortly,” he revealed. “How do they pay with no money coming in?” he asked.
The mayor depicted the city as a working class ing the public schools early.
He did not reveal he had gone to Aruba for a vacation as the virus emergency hit full force.
He ordered the schools stronghold.
“We’re the truck drivers, the cleaners, the public works employees. We’re the essential people,” he said.
The density and the closeness of structures and that so many people are living in apartment houses or with extended families he said reminded him of his heritage.
“It is a lot like Italy, people living so close together in crowded apartment houses,” he added.
“That’s why the virus spread so quickly there,” he implied.
The mayor seemed to congratulate himself for closed early in mid March, from the beach in Aruba.
The mayor did not talk about his real estate investments and how heavily they are leveraged with debt.
In one instance, he owes $1.65 million on a four-unit property in Everett.
Like everything else that has declined in value overnight, his real estate is worth a fraction of what it was worth before the economic shutdown.
This isn’t just his problem, he admitted during the interview.
“We’re all in this together,” he said.