-by El Gitano Peñasco, "The Peñasco Gypsy"Seems the folks at the Fitch Ratings Group (one of the ‘Big Three’), who first introduced their long-term credit ratings system in 1924 by assigning an alphabetic scale from 'AAA' (best) to 'D' (worst) has recently removed Puerto Peñasco from the bottom rung (“D” rating) on the ladder, so to speak.
It also seems that as of this past December our government, I mean the tax payers here in Peñasco, have a debt in the vicinity of around 87 Million Pesos (about $6 Million dollars, give or take) and although that may not seem like a lot of tamales it did get me wondering what our community leaders do with the funds?
Actually, I’m not really sure but I did ask myself if could have run up a $6 Million dollar debt how would I have used those funds? Take discovery trips to (e.g.) Arizona and explore a better relationship between our two states? Maybe attend some conferences in San Diego and attend a conference about tourism? How about a couple of studies for the proposed Convention Center (even though we already have one) or maybe an impact report on that new cruise ship port deal?
Oh, here’s is an idea. Maybe I could have spent about ½ of that $6 Million dollars to hire 1,000 laborers here in PP and pay them each $15 per day to build something the community surely needs?
Let’s see now, at $15 per day (a notch or two above scale) that means, working a five-day work week these good hard working mostly-family folks would be on the job for about 40 weeks (darn near a year) and of course they’d spend their earnings right here in Peñasco!
Now all I’d have to do is see what I could buy with the other $3,000,000 (USD) like maybe put in a community-wide WiFi system and buy (wholesale) a bunch of refurbished (and guaranteed) computers so that every home here with children could be ‘online’ so the kids could study and explore the ‘world’.
I know for sure I could hook all of Peñasco up on a WiFi system for what amounts to chump change and being the good bargain hunter that any Gypsy is I could surely buy truck loads of refurbished computers/laptops for pennies on the dollar…
Of course it’s thoughts such as those that kept me from becoming an elected official in the old-country…
A Gypsy can always dream!
¡Viva Puerto Peñasco y México!
Gypsy
elgitanopenasco@gmail.com
