Council Leader Calls Special Meeting for Presentation From City’s New Borrowing Consultant

The City Council’s newly elected President Pro-Tempore Eva Magnuszewski (D-AL) has called a special meeting of the Council to hear a presentation by the city’s borrowing consultant, Mesirow Financial. The meeting will be held on Monday, December 11, 2017.

The city warrant calling for the special meeting does not state the purpose of the purpose of the presentation, only referring it to as an, “Informational Session.”

Mesirow Financial was recently hired by Republican Mayor Erin Stewart after her former Chief of Staff, John Healey, was hired by Mesirow.

After leaving his job working for Stewart, Healey went to work for William Blair and Company, which was the city’s borrowing consultant at the time. The Council resolution to authorize the hiring of Mesirow, taken up in the then-Republican dominated City Council, said that, “William Blair and Company, the City’s Public Finance Underwriting firm, has decided to move out of the public finance business and the City’s representatives have moved to Mesirow Financial.”

Healey was one of the two key people who moved from William Blair to Mesirow. As the New Britain Herald reported on August 23, 2017, Healey was hired as managing director for New England market for Mesirow.

Stewart has come under heavy criticism for borrowing tens of millions of dollars on the credit of city taxpayers in order to push debt payments into the future, at the cost of higher debt payments for city taxpayers in future years.