It's time for this bi-weekly meeting of the Finance and Business Committee of Denver City Council.

Join us for the Finance and Business Committee starting now.

All right. Well, welcome, everyone. Apologies for the start of this committee.

My name is Serena Gonzalez-Kietas. I'm one of your council members at large and chair of the Finance and Business Committee.

Today is Tuesday, January 13th, and we have really one big item on our agenda today, and this is regarding the bond issuance.

And so, you know, the bond that was just passed recently,

and so we're going to be going into conversations about that

and what the funding is going to look like and how that's going to roll out.

So I'm going to pass it over to our council members for introductions,

and then we'll pass it over to the folks who will be doing the presentation.

But to start off, I don't think we have anybody online.

Just want to double check.

All right.

I will start to my right.

Introduction.

Jenny Sandoval, Northwest Denver, District 1.

Hello, Diana Romero Campbell,

Southeast Denver, District 4.

Paul Cashman, South Denver, District 6.

Dr. Lewis, District 8.

Dale Watson, Vine, District 9.

Fantastic, I will hand it over to all of you.

We talked about maybe a brief presentation

and then I will be taking,

starting a queue for council members for questions.

Right ahead.

Hi, I'm Molly Scarborough,

Bond Program Manager, Dottie.

Patrick Riley, Bond Program Manager, Department of Finance.

And Christopher Federico, Capital Financial Administrator with Department of Finance.

Wonderful.

Thank you all for joining us today.

We're here primarily to present two actions for you all.

The first is an ordinance authorizing the issuance of two series of bonds,

a taxable and a tax-exempt bond issuance in regards to the vibrant Denver bonds

that were passed back in November.

The second is a resolution approving a proposed contract between the city and TriUnity Inc.

We'll go through the financing timeline and terms, quickly hit on the program management

contract, do a quick bond program update, and then get into the questions.

On November 5th, the mayor held a press conference and he outlined three promises.

The first and most significant, to me at least, was that all bond projects that are on the

bond will start in 2026 in whatever it's for each project's next stage is.

So if a project needs community engagement and planning, we're going to jump right into

that.

If it is ready for design, we will start design immediately.

If something can move into construction, we will go into construction immediately.

Second promise was that we will have a project dashboard online for the public.

by the end of quarter one, 2026.

And third was a commitment that all bond projects

will be complete and open to the public

no later than December 31st of 31.

For this first issuance, we are looking at $410 million.

This will keep us on track for hitting our six-year deadline.

This is where I'll call out that for the tax-exempt bonds,

we have certain spend requirements.

That is, 85% of those bonds have to be spent within the first three years, and there is a 100% spend requirement for those bonds at a five-year period.

This is why we would not just issue 100% immediately.

That same requirement does not apply to the tax-exempt bonds.

This is how we stay on track for the 2031 deadline, and this has no impact to the city's general fund.

A quick overview of how it breaks out across all of the portfolios, although we will hit that in a later slide.

This puts us on target for a closing date on the bonds of March 5th of 26.

And this first issuance is designed to carry us through the end of 27 when we would be returning to this body for issuance number two.

As it relates to how the bond would plan to finance this issuance one at $410 million,

and issuance two, again, at the end of $27 for $440,

and then a projected issuance three at $99 million toward the end of the bond, approximately $29.

quick breakout on financing terms 217 of this 217 and a half million to be in tax exempt 192.5

to be in the taxable you'll see these not to exceed interest rates when we go to the market

we have to go with not to exceed terms we have historically not paid anywhere close to these

not to exceeds. The last time we went to market was for Rise Elevate in 2024.

We paid 3.17 and 3.42 percent interest on those.

A proposed financing timeline. Again, we are here today for you all. We would plan,

if the body finds it acceptable, to go to mayor council next week.

that would lead to a first reading for the issuance on the second

and the first and only reading for the program management contract on the second.

A second reading for the issuance on February 9th,

which would put us on target for pre-closing and closing on the bonds

approximately March 3rd to 5th.

Getting into the project list,

you'll see that we break out again by portfolio here.

You got $93 million in the transportation and mobility.

You can see the funded phase in activity here as well.

To the right, you'll see that in some cases we're looking at the design and the right-of-way acquisitions really driving things.

On something like Santa Fe, where the design was further along, you'll see that the full construction amount is in there.

so it depends on which project and how far along it was or what it's needed for its next stage as

far as what is funded here. Parks and Rec, kind of the same thing. Some of these playgrounds,

things like the Cherry Creek Trail lighting, we feel like we can go out and start working on that

pretty quickly. We'd like to go get that work on the ground and really let the community see their

their vote mattered and that we can go implement those projects immediately.

So you see those full dollar figures in here immediately for the design and construction.

So quite a bit in the parks and rec is design and construction in this first funding tranche.

You'll start seeing the taxables come in here.

These are our FAAs, our funding assignment agreements.

This is where we are effectively giving money to a different entity and we're administering it.

We treat these as reimbursable contracts effectively where we just administer money with a partner agency.

Getting into the facilities, again, quite a bit of like our libraries

where we feel like we can go get these done in this first three years.

So we're going to go push.

And then our co-located housing and our affordable housing are also taxable, and we would issue those in full from the beginning.

Getting into the program management contract.

We ran an RFQ, Request for Qualifications, and selected TriUnity.

TriUnity is a Denver-based company, started as an MWBE company here in Denver.

They graduated out of our DSBO program and were later acquired by Lochner, which is a global engineering firm.

The team here that was proposed has ties back to local Denver projects.

They worked on National Western Center, BRT, 16th Street Mall, the A-Line.

They have experience in this market.

This was a fully local team.

They came with a diverse group of partners, a very deep bench.

Um, this contract itself that we're bringing to you is a seven year contract for a six

year bond that would give us a year for closeout after the bond is complete.

Uh, it's a $45 million capacity.

We would propose to do yearly task orders to help performance manage that through.

Um, it has an MWB participation goal of 20% that they have committed to.

The previous contracts for elevate and rise were at nine.

they achieved 15%.

DSBO felt that that could be improved on this contract,

and I'm proud to say that we were able to get that,

and we hope to achieve even higher than that.

Again, this is paid through.

The bond program has no general fund ties at all,

and we would execute from this if approved.

A general update on the bond as a whole.

as we went into vibrant we looked at lessons learned from rise and elevate the things that

went well and there are things that were good core successes that we were able to build off of

we also were critical and said that there were things that needed to change

we came to a conclusion that we needed to really focus on a program first mentality and

And a big part of that is that we needed to have dedicated bond team members that were funded out of the bond,

that we could make sure we did not have competing interests.

We needed to create a centralized accountability for the bond itself.

We need to empower our team.

We needed to break down the silos between the different entities, whether it's Parks or DOTI or CAO or the mayor's office.

And we need to resource to move quickly.

Six years is not a lot of time.

We've made a lot of promises sitting at this table and out in the public.

So that's a lot of words, and what does that mean?

That means that we need to break those walls down.

We need to collaborate together.

We need to embed OSCI.

We need to embed arts and venues in public art,

so that way our public art has every opportunity to be embedded into the project

and not tacked on at the end.

Sometimes when you bring them in late, they just get to be an afterthought and we've missed opportunity.

We need to have city attorney in with us from the beginning.

We need to have all of the different pieces from communications and planning, community engagement.

It needs to be done together, not done to each other, and we can't have silos for this to work.

as we started looking at the program as a whole we really identified that there's there's kind of

four buckets that the projects really land into we have these big complex projects things like

west 38th park hill the first responders safety training center that they need longer durations

they have more community outreach to kind of define the scope further we have these early

wins, things that we just need to go do. There's not a ton of definition that needs to be around

a traffic signal. We just need to go do this work. The citizens of Denver deserve that,

and they anticipate that we're going to go do this work, and we need to.

We have our partner-led projects, things like the art museum or the zoo,

that we're just administering money and funding for others. So we need to get

the funding agreements in place and enable our partners to go to work.

And then we have kind of all of our other projects, our standard course of businesses, our libraries, our pools, our rec centers that have a standard level of engagement.

And all of that leads to how we're approaching involving city council, how we're approaching involving our communities into building our involvement with you.

We are proposing to report to you as a body quarterly at mayor council.

We know that we will be reporting to you on our on-call contracts and you have your standard legislative review of contracts.

We'll continue to come to you with one-on-one briefings for the projects in your districts or projects that you have interest in that may not be in your district.

We would propose to bring project-specific community meetings and engagement and shape that engagement to your district and your projects as you need.

The reality is some of those complex projects, the engagement is different than a single traffic signal.

It just is.

And we want to go celebrate with you and the public in your districts when we get these things across the line, the groundbreakings, the ribbon cuttings.

We want this to be a point of celebration.

But really more than anything else, that upper right corner, I think, is the piece that's the most important part on this slide.

We want to partner with you to co-create how this looks.

So if there's a spot that we're missing here, we would love for you to let us know how we can best serve you and your district.

And that's...

Thank you so much.

Awesome.

All right.

We have a couple of council members in the queue,

starting with Councilman Watson,

followed by Councilwoman Lewis.

Thank you.

Thank you, committee chair.

Thank you so much, Patrick, Molly, and team,

and everyone in the audience that's helped with this.

I think this is a smart kind of first touch for us

to have a sense of kind of your phasing process.

My questions are around two things.

First, I'll start on something we didn't present on,

kind of the CIP remodeling.

Can you share a little bit as to which projects

did to make the bond?

What's that process for you all to evaluate and move towards CIP and what that communication looks like?

So we had a thousand projects that were submitted and those projects didn't die.

We referred those back to the departments.

We had 250 plus projects that went to subcommittees.

And I'm pretty happy that the way that that overlapped with our six year CIP was almost a complete circle to start with.

So we had those represented in the six-year CIP.

We were able to just have a good understanding that we already knew about a lot of those.

We're in the process this year of updating our six-year CIP.

And Jackson, do you want to kind of talk about that process?

But as we're updating that six-year CIP, I think we'll be working to make sure that we've captured everything.

Yeah, absolutely.

Good morning, counsel.

uh jackson brockway capital planning and programming division uh councilman appreciate

the question um patrick is correct okay we'll proceed uh patrick is correct there um we will

be updating the six-year cip document um charter does require us to keep that six-year plan we

generally update it on a two-year cycle so if you can believe it or not uh we are we are due for an

update so we will be getting that process off the ground shortly um and we'll be coming to council

for some briefings on that process and soliciting feedback.

We will also be incorporating all of the conversations and all of the projects that were identified

in the vibrant Denver process, as well as things that came up during the 2026 budget.

That's the opportunity for us to begin really continuing the conversations on those projects

and continuing to vet and evaluate and prioritize those.

Thanks, Jackson.

Next question is on a protocol on communication and coordination with your teams.

Is there a communication toolkit that you all are leveraging for, for example,

if we're looking at a Marion underpass, some of these are going to be longer communication processes

that aren't just a 30-day regular city communication to community members.

My office is more than willing to collaborate for all the ones in D9

and help to build what that toolkit looks like for this expedited process,

but curious up front, what's your process and do you have our building kits when it comes to the communication of moving these projects?

Thank you, Council Member.

We are, first of all, as Patrick said, we are coming to Council on a quarterly basis, Mayor Council on a quarterly basis, to give you updates.

As part of that, we also want to bring updates on our community engagement plans for the various projects.

We'll also be doing briefings with you.

We are working closely with our agencies who have those close community engagement connections on their projects.

And we're going to be looking at it programmatically at what is the right level of engagement for different projects.

As Patrick mentioned, some have a more extensive engagement process.

Some have less.

Working with our agencies to map out what that looks like.

And then specifically connecting with you and other council members on what that plan is so that we can make sure we are communicating with the community at the right pace, at the right level, make sure we're getting the right involvement along the way.

It is going to be tailored per project necessarily because of the project.

Well, we're co-creating, Council Member Lewis and I, NPI, yeah, NPI plan together.

So we'll make sure that we're incorporating you all in those dialogues because obviously many of these transportation projects are going to be a part of our discussions as we're going through connectivity between our districts.

So I may have other questions, but I know other folks are in a queue.

So thank you all so much for your good work and really working with us on this.

I'm very excited for the D9 projects on this list.

You signed me up for more work.

More work, sister.

Can you have a few more sticky notes?

Councilman Lewis, you're up next.

All right, cool.

I hope you've got a fine question.

The tax exempt, that's the 85%, 100% spend three years, or that's the non-taxable?

The tax exempt has the 85% over three years requirement.

Got it.

Okay.

And then the average debt service payment on slide nine, is that the total over the course of the issuance, or is that per slide nine?

If she does.

Okay.

If you need to see it, I wrote it down.

The average annual estimated debt service, that's the total until 2050?

The $15.8 million and the $14.8 million?

One second, sorry, here.

Take your time, you're fine.

So yes, that is the until the end of the maturation of those bonds.

That is the annual debt service for those bonds.

Oh, it is annual.

Oh, it says right there.

It starts with an A.

Ah, shit.

Sorry about that.

Can you give me an example of what the private components are for the taxable pieces?

What is that?

Sure.

Well, just a little bit of explanation, too.

Typically, Denver issues general obligation bonds as tax exempt.

That's the favorable approach to do it since it's a lower borrowing cost.

If we do have any sort of anticipated private use in any of the facilities, that would make us issue taxable bonds.

And so we've looked at some of the cultural facilities.

And so like the zoo, for instance, the Botanic Gardens, those have management contracts that are not qualified management agreements according to our bond council.

So that forces us essentially or it's recommended by our bond council to issue those as taxable so that we don't have to account for the private use.

On every bond issuance, there's a 10% limit of private use that we can absorb into the program.

And that's for related private use.

There's also unrelated private use, which is a 5% threshold.

So it's even a tighter requirement that we have to abide by.

And so really issuing taxable bonds, it possibly might be a little more expensive,

but it really opens up our ability to operate the facility how we need to in the future.

What types of things go, like what will qualify as a related versus an unrelated?

So let's see here.

Unrelated would be an easier thing to describe.

So we have looked at like naming rights and possibly bringing in sponsors

to bring funding into some of these projects to make them grow.

So like let's say Coca-Cola comes in and wants to help finance something

so that they can have naming rights on the facility.

that would be unrelated to what the facility is most likely used for.

So that would be an unrelated example.

In like a arts and venues theater, typically there's concessions and things like that.

That would be private use, but that's somewhat related to the facility and what you would expect.

Super helpful.

Thank you so much.

And then I wanted to talk about, to Councilman Watson's point, about the engagement.

Obviously, this is my first bond, and we had the subcommittees.

Will you have something similar to that when it comes to, like, the engagement once we start to get into the design or construction of the projects?

I think that there's places where there will be similar things to that, something like the American Indian Cultural Embassy.

I think that there's a place where something similar to that exists.

it's going to depend on a project by project basis and kind of what the project needs are.

Got it. So not necessarily like an overall bond committee, but more specific to like,

if we're doing the park, you have something specific for the park design, something specific

for the embassy. I think, yes, that's really what we're visioning this is, is to really shape the

projects for the neighborhoods and communities that are most impacted by them. Okay. And then,

did you want to add something well i was just going to say in addition to the project specific

engagement like i said we'll be coming to you and letting you know about engagement that will be

forthcoming in the in the upcoming quarter at our mayor council briefings with you but also where

it makes sense and again this is where we want to engage with you if you're having a town hall

or something where we can bring information about multiple projects in your districts if that makes

sense with the timing of the engagement, we're happy to do that.

Again, we really want to make sure we're operating both at the project level, but also bringing

you the holistic needs of the program.

Great.

Thank you so much.

And then this is for my beloved constituents, Mr. Murray and Ms. Ann.

They were the pioneers who got us the Senior Tech Lab, and they met with me last week to

make sure that we are still on track to have the senior tech lab and that that building is or that

space is not going to be used for anything else. Any of you can say with determination and and

confidence that that space will not be used for anything else except for the expansion of the

senior tech lab. Please. So we are working with real estate now. That is a very very large space

and we will fit it to the needs of the senior center.

I don't think that the entirety of that space, the dollar figures,

we're not going to go very far in that whole space if you were to try to distribute it across the entirety of that space.

That's right. And they are aware of that.

They just want to make sure that the government, I am government, just in case anyone was wondering,

has not sold them a lie and told them that we were going to expand the senior tech lab

and we have changed our minds because we passed the bond.

So they just want to know that the project is going to happen.

I told them over my dead body, but that's not compelling enough, unfortunately.

It is in its first issuance.

It is our intention to move that forward pretty quickly.

Write it.

This recording will be sent directly to them.

Please.

I will say it loud and proud.

Hold us accountable here.

That's right.

Great.

Thank you.

Any other council members with questions, comments?

I have just a couple quick questions because I didn't get to go over this when I met with you all.

And I'm glad that you brought it up.

It's one of the taxable versus the other types.

And so I know under the project list under Health and Human Services,

I noticed for Denver Children's Advocacy Center and the Denver Health Westside,

those are both shown as taxable and when you explain like taxable is because there is a private

use of those however i don't understand how those are considered private because those are

the reason that a person would be using denver health is for medical reasons and then with

denver children's advocacy center that's still a public space it's whoever is experiencing

need for the services that are offered there?

So it comes down to, like, they are for public use, both of those facilities.

Really, the management of those facilities is more on the private side.

And so if it's not set up and established as a qualified management agreement straight out of the gate,

then it is a private use situation that would warrant us to issue taxable bonds for it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

It's unfortunate more than anything else.

So effectively, if it's not government, then it starts to drift toward the private use.

With general obligations, it's only state and other local governments, which are like bids and jids and things like that, for example.

But otherwise, federal government is also treated as private use, as well as 501c3s when it comes to general obligation bonds.

Thank you.

Council Pro Tem Ramira Campbell.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

And it's more just a quick comment.

I know in our briefing we had talked about this a little bit.

It's very ambitious and it's being implemented in a much different way.

And so I appreciate that.

I know in previous bonds, Southeast Denver and District 4,

we're getting those bond projects now.

So I just appreciate that you're going to push all forward,

and maybe this is the next part of the conversation as to how that's going to happen.

But I just wanted to say thank you for really helping to prioritize across the city

what we have available to be able to move.

I know people are incredibly excited about a skate park

and looking forward to what is the beginning of a rec center in space.

in space so i just appreciate that that's moving forward in this first issuance the correct term

that we have um that was really more of just my comment but thank you for all the work that you've

been doing to be able to respond and i look forward to those briefings so thank you great

well again thank you and thank you for taking the time to reach out to council members individually

to keep them updated because we know this is going to be a lot coming at us and so really

appreciate the thought behind that and you taking the time to do that and thank you to my colleagues

for taking up any briefings that are offered to you just so that you can stay in the know of what's

going on and so we won't hopefully have to like use committee as extensively unless there's something

really wild that happens which I would hope not. With that said this is an action item so I will

need a motion and a second so moved all right moved by council president sandoval seconded by

councilman heinz is there anyone that would like to take this to a vote are we good with this going

forward to the full body yeah full body all right um with that said this will be moving to the full

body and we don't have anything on consent so everybody's free to go about your day and we are

Thank you.

Thank you.