OFFICIALS: DEBT IS WARRANTED

Debt pays.

Current and former Cape Girardeau city officials insist the growing debt from bonds has benefited the community.

Money from the sale of bonds has been used to build a fire station, a trash transfer station, sewers and streets.

Bond money has helped fund construction of the Show Me Center and the Cape LaCroix-Walker Creek flood control project, and purchase the water system from Union Electric.

"We are just not borrowing money to build monuments to ourselves or things of that nature," Mayor Al Spradling III said.

Former assistant city manager Al Stoverink defended using bonds. "If you don't do it, you stifle that cycle of growth," he said.

Stoverink resigned about a year ago to become director of Southeast Missouri State University's physical plant.

He said bond-funded projects have led to business growth in recent years, including the opening of the Wal-Mart store and other businesses west of Interstate 55.

Less than a decade ago, the city's northwestern-most trunk sewer ended at Arena Park.

Along Route K, near Mt. Auburn Road, the motels and St. Francis Medical Center were asked to do their laundry at night because the city's sewer system was inadequate.

Former city councilman David Barklage and former mayor Gene Rhodes have expressed concern about the city's growing debt, which is expected to top $100 million next year.

But Stoverink dismisses such criticism.

He said former mayor Howard Tooke was criticized in the early 1980s because he opposed borrowing money to extend major sewers and build streets.

Stoverink said city officials have never tried to hide the rising debt, which has been openly discussed by city staff and the council.

Spradling said the large debt only becomes a concern if funding sources dry up.

"We have had no problem with our funding sources," he said.

City Manager J. Ronald Fischer said the city's bonds are being retired through specific sources of revenue, such as user fees, taxes and street and water assessments.

Money from the sale of bonds, for example, is financing construction of Lexington Street, and the bonds are being retired mostly with street assessments levied on owners of property abutting Lexington, Fischer said.

Finance Director John Richbourg said a majority of the debt, including the $25 million sewer-bond issue, was approved by voters and and the city council.

"It's not just management sneaking something past them," he said.