The City of Portland is out borrowing millions again -- this time for part of a new police dispatch system and for part of the city's troubled financial computer conversion. With the new bond issue comes a new official sales document for the city's paper, and as usual, it sheds light on some aspects of the city's finances that the mainstream media doesn't report much about:

There's some good news and some bad news in this document. First, the good news: The city's slacked off on borrowing money in the last half of 2009. The overall long-term bond load is actually down slightly from what it was six months ago. But in addition to this month's new IOUs, Portland's planning some humdinger borrowings in 2010, including $75 million for the water system in January; a monstrous new $430 million mortgage on the sewer system in February; and more "urban renewal" hock in SoWhat and Lents sometime during the year. But at least over the past several months, the crazy borrowers at City Hall appear to have taken a breather.

Now the bad news: In addition to the roughly $2.3 billion unfunded pension liability for police and firefighters, now the city has opened up a fairly hefty unfunded retirement liability for the rest of its workforce. That other segment of its workers, covered by the state PERS system, was enjoying a surplus of funding for a while there, but since the investment returns of PERS tanked along with everyone else's starting in 2008, now there's an unfunded liability of $259.2 million on the city's books as of December 31, 2008:

We've made adjustments in our City of Portland debt-o-meter (in our left sidebar) to reflect these new realities. For our estimate of long-term bonds and interim financing, we've set a new baseline of $2,874,288,790 as of November 1, 2009, growing at an annual rate of 4.7% (the rate the city's bond balance has grown over the last couple of years). For unfunded pension and retiree healthcare liabilities, we've set a new baseline of $2,687,987,638 as of December 31, 2008, growing at an annual rate of 6.5%, which is the last apples-to-apples annual growth rate we have been able to divine from the city's pension pronouncements.

With those new figures plugged in, the long-term city debt per resident is now pushing $9,825. With another $505 million of bonds showing up over the next quarter, that figure is going be well over $10,000 by the time the Easter bunny comes to call. Go by streetcar!