The Council Bluffs City Council held a study session and regular meeting on August 10, 2026. The study session featured presentations on bond sales, proposed park upgrades, and a building condition assessment. The regular meeting addressed public hearings, resolutions, ordinances, and personnel decisions. Key outcomes included approval of bond sales with favorable rates, endorsement of a park improvement plan contingent on city-owned parking lot, and creation of two new community development positions funded by abolishing the chief of staff position.
For the city of Council Bluffs. I used to be project manager in Council Bluffs years ago, so glad to be back. The bid the results of sale is the document that I'll be reviewing. We took bids at 10 o'clock this morning for $6,900,000 general obligation bonds, which is your CIP series for 2026. Happy to report. And banks receive a discount for being bank qualified in their own investments and things. So these were 10 year bonds paid for by the debt service levy. The true interest cost is sort of that aggregated interest rate that we use to every maturity in that 10-year term gets its own interest rate. So we use a TIC or true interest cost method to tell you sort of the overall interest rate for the bonds. The TIC range from the first place bidder to the 10th place bidder was 3.21% to 3.32%. That is an extremely tight range for 10 different bids to be within 11 basis points or 0.11% of each other. And that just indicates the strong competition to win the city's bonds today. And my staff came to me this morning and said, is this a mistake? They only took a dollar per bond in underwriters discount, which is ridiculously happily ridiculously low. We're very pleased to take their pay them their dollar per bond. We had estimated $10 per bond. So very happy to see that savings today. Out of New York, New York, they were at 3.2588% or just 4.6 basis points over the winning bidder today. Pricing just 0.24% or 24 basis points over triple A. So excellent pricing today for the bonds. And you know, I always want to kind of take a look back at where were we last year? The market over the 20-year term is essentially flat, one basis point down. But what happened is we had a normalization of the yield curve. So years one through 10 were actually higher this year than last year, and years 10 through 20 are actually lower than last year. So we had a kind of a normalization of the yield curve, which means since you're borrowing on the 10 year, actually a little bit higher TIC, unfortunately today. But 3.3.09% last year, just 12 basis points below where we were last year. But still excellent pricing, excellent participation from the market. We were thrilled to receive 10 bids today and an amazing winner with Brownstone Investment Group. Regarding the B, that's the taxable series that the city does each year for taxable projects that don't qualify for federal tax exemption. Just two-year term paying back in the first two years. And these again were rated A2 by Moody's. We received five bids from 39 different banks. There was a large selling group with Baird. They had over, I want to say 34 members in their selling group today. And so it doesn't surprise me to see a little bit wider spread. But Piper Sandler really won the day.10% over the winning bidder. And pricing, when compared to triple AB valve, which is a tax exempt scale, 1.78, but right in line with where we would think where we would think. We were then we were then $20,000 of our estimate for the taxable sale, and we were able to reduce the par amount by over $400,000 based on the pricing today for the A series. percent um 10 basis points are 0.10% over the winning bidder um and pricing when compared to triple AB value which is a tax exempt scale 1.78 um but right in line with where we would think where we would think we were then we were then 2000 of our estimate for the taxable sale and we were able to reduce the par amount by over 400 thousand dollars based on the pricing today for the A series and these are all structured to be paid for by the debt service levy based on the pre-levy that was authorized as part of the budget process earlier this year and I will be uh and so everything has been resized to fit within the tax rates that were already determined in the current tax rate for fiscal 27 and with that I'm happy to answer any questions anyone might have any questions okay okay thank you so much congratulations on a very successful day thank you thank you Danielle okay next up we have um Hawk County Conservation Brenda Chris and Chris and Jeff Franco to talk about proposed park upgrades at Iowa School for the deaf and highway 92. Yes uh thank you for the opportunity um the the team here tonight or today is uh Superintendent Chris Caftain from Iowa School for the Deaf Pottawatomy Conservation Board member Chris Ruhawk and Pottawatomi Conservation Director Jeff Franco we have been working together um on trying to figure out how to make this location shine a little bit more for actually a couple of years at least it's a very important location it's highly visible um it's important for trail access it's a key part of recreation I think on the east side of the city um we've been discussing it for several years because it's a little bit of a challenge to figure out how we can make sure that the security and safety on the ISD campus is intact while we also meet the needs of the public. And so that is what you're gonna hear about. The reason we are here to talk about it is because the success of this project kind of hinges on the city's willingness to own and maintain the parking lot on the east side off of the ISD campus. It's where the parking lot currently is if you went straight ahead on Valley View you'll see a picture of that. We've been talking to Matt Cox and his team about that and now coming to the council so you can understand what it is that we're trying to do and hopefully get the go ahead to continue to work on putting together a plan. So with that I will hand it over to Chris Ruhack well thank you appreciate the opportunity to discuss the the parking lot portion but let me give you a little bit of history on on this project because it has been a project that has been around for 36 years. It started back in 1990 I kind of have a robust slideshow so we're gonna kind of rush along but you'll have the data and information to look at at a later time. But in short I kind of revived this back in 2014 thought it would be a good project for us to work on but it's taken that long to get to the point where you know that area we can kind of get together and and maybe like Brenda said make it a highlight on that side of town. If you've been over in that area people use it daily usually see five to six cars every morning and then throughout the day and then into the evening so we're gonna kind of spruce it up again revive it the the basic portion of it will be the trails and education but as far as the history we all know that that uh we're not going to go back far as as the Native Americans or Lewis and Clark but they certainly were were here but we'll start with the Mormons specifically because that site was you know from uh the Mormons came through uh from NAVO stopped there right before winter had to gonna basically wait to cross river at that time so they there was a a site there and there's there's some history there the the national parks actually has some um signage there um and some other things along that that um focus on that history but um it's gonna move forward here's a little bit talks a little bit about what was started it was supposed to be a nature center um there was a a lot of partners involved as far as in support not necessarily financially but in support um so if if you want to read kind of what what's here um but if you we go forward here we talk about uh I don't know if I can scroll up on that or not but basically tells you you know what was uh meant to for this to start you know public access inclusion um student engagement of course on campus we have schools um we would hope that all the schools when it's finished would be able to use it again we'll talk about that a little bit further here integration uh obviously with on campus with ISD being so close there with uh children with disabilities and and and but for everybody general public and that interaction we want that to happen and then of course with the trail being there health and well-being these are some of the partners that were originally involved um and and so you can see it was significant we have letters of support at that time um and um so the dream was there uh it just didn't we weren't able to uh make it come to fruition but I'd like to do that now and to start it off with And then, of course, with the trail being there, health and well-being. These are some of the partners that were originally involved.