absolutely. we can do that. yeah, absolutely. out of uniform, sergeant hutto can be more candid about his opinions, both as a private citizen and as the vice president of stockton s police union. the real problem with the city s finances lies in right here, downtown redevelopment. according to hutto, when the city was borrowing and spending to develop the waterfront, they neglected to put money into the employee pension system. during that same time frame, you know, california public employees retirement system was doing so well that they said stockton, you don t have to make the payments. you can put that money into an investment account and earn money or whatever. so when the stock crashed and said okay, all that money you owe us, go ahead and pay us now, take it out of your investments. well, stockton didn t have investments. they spent it. our retirements bought this. so, yeah, we re to blame because we still want our retirement. but they re the ones that spent our money.
it s just a place to dock boats. there s no gas. no place to get food or place to dump your waste. it s a marina that doesn t serve the purposes of a marina. it cost $22 million. this is an awesome baseball stadium. you have to admit. but, you know, you have to wonder how much money does a minor league baseball team generate. for pacific pride you could do a lot of other things with $22 million. it s a nice looking arena. and a great place to catch cirque du soleil when they come to town, once a year. this is the crown jewel of stockton. in the middle of the boom, the city hall decided, what we need is a new city hall for $40 million. they ended up defaulting on it.
so much money changing hands. when we do head back to the camp, i discover a little keepsake from my day? i hit my leg on the bus and thought why did that hurt so much. i pulled up my pants, i had a thorn stuck in the side of my leg. see if we can t take that out now. ow. ow. a little souvenir to remind me of my long day of back-breaking labor. i feel like what i got to experience, you know, was something most people will never get to. and i think it s eye opening because it does give you tremendous more respect for these guys and what they do. i ll be thinking about them every time i have a glass of orange juice for the rest of my life. i m going to miss you. thank you very everything. you re welcome. (knochello?
$55.7 million, roughly $238 million today, pontiac sold it in 2009 for $583,000. about 1% of what it cost to build. they netted just about enough cash from the deal to buy a nice three bedroom in phoenix. there is harrisburg, pennsylvania. they racked up a $310 million debt by failing to fix a broken trash incinerator. so steven reed, the mayor at the time, did what any responsible mayor would do. he used the money that could have gone to fix the incinerator to travel the country and collect $8 million worth of artifacts for a proposed wild west museum. located in harrisburg, pennsylvania. stockton didn t go the wild west route. they did something even more desperate. faced with huge deficits, they made drastic cuts to municipal services, including the department of public works, the fire department, and a full 25% of their police force. there have been a lot of
they re still going strong, fixing up area playgrounds and joining forces with tony finnegan, helping him to drive customers home from his bar. tony has had to add two more hats to his banned list, but he has managed to keep his bar free from violence. on april 1st, 2013, a judge in federal court declared stockton officially bankrupt. the city is now starting the long process of restructuring its finances and paying its creditors. stockton s bankruptcy is historic. and how it works its way out will set the precedent for struggling cities across the country. one thing that i think is really hopeful that has come out of this is that there seems to be a real willingness of the people to work together to try to fix things. maybe that s what happens when you hit rock bottom. when you finally hit the bottom, you say wow. when there is no money left, what do you have? people are realizing it s not going to be just fixed by money, it s going to be fixed by us. i think that s a good message i t