The Lakewood City Council Committee of the Whole met on January 26, 2026, at 6:00 p.m. in the City Hall Auditorium to hear two major presentations: an annual bond council update on the city’s debt and proposed 2026 bond anticipation notes (BANS), and a detailed proposal from the administration and Liberty Development to relocate administrative functions to 1470 Warren Road and convert the current City Hall into a combined police and court justice center. The meeting, which was livestreamed and open to the public, included extensive discussion but no formal votes on the substantive proposals.
All right, we will call committee of the whole order. Sorry, just having a little technical issue up here. So first I'll move to approve the minutes of the January 20th committee of the whole without the necessity of a reading. Second. Motion's been made and seconded. Discussion. Hearing none, all those in favor? Aye. And that motion passes. Okay, so our two main items tonight are hearing from our bond council for our annual presentation about the debt load, and then we also have continuing conversation, the presentation from the administration about the city hall proposal. So I'm assuming we're starting with bond council. That's kind of where we were thinking, but I'll turn it over to Director Mahoney and team. Okay. All right. Great. Good evening, everyone. Just by way of introduction, my name is Jeff Rink. I'm a managing director with Key Bank Capital Markets. And I had our public finance efforts here working with municipalities and school districts and other governmental entities. And I'm joined today by bond counsel from Bricker, Catherine Swartz. So for those that have heard from us in the past, wonderful to see all of you and for the newer uh council members, welcome, congratulations, and uh please is hopefully you'll see as we sort of get into our presentation. Um we really want to be here as a resource uh for the administration and for you. So we we think we've put together a presentation that we've dropped off at your uh at your spot up there, but as we go through it, uh invariably there's there's always questions as as we welcome and should be. So um please interrupt us and you know we'll drill down into whatever uh questions you may have as we go along, if that's uh if that's acceptable. Um so we're obviously here to talk about the city's plan of finance for 2026. It consists, I know, of a number of um uh of legislative items uh around uh what's called a note issue, and then there is actually uh some bond legislation, and so we'll explain sort of why we have both and what they're looking to accomplish. Um a big important topic that I can assure you we are um with your wonderful finance staff are constantly looking at and working on uh is sort of the the the capital and more so debt planning of the city. So we'll talk a lot about that because I do I know we we do come here every year, and so you only see us once a year, and um in some instances we're saying some of the same things we've said in previous years, but there is um a lot of analysis that goes into this, right? It's not uh in in on you know an unending supply of revenue that the city can just continue to borrow from, right? And so um I I do say to you, we we do try to look at all that, and with the city administration and with the and with the finance department, make sure that we're sort of properly planned so that what uh the administration and council decide from a policy perspective and projects you may want to fund, that at the end of the day uh we can afford to do that, right? Um one of the wonderful things about the city of Lakewood among many is your credit rating, right? Your credit rating is a double A2, and we'll talk about that in terms of that is um on the upper echelon of municipalities across the country, uh and one uh in particular for Lakewood because of um a lot of the wonderful things that the community offers, and then also because of how the city is managed and run, and that is on the administrative side as well as council and how you also oversee sort of the budget and finance throughout the year. So we'll get into all of that. Um try to be mindful of time, but but again, encourage uh questions certainly as we we go along. We we truly want to be a resource for uh uh for the city. So my role at Key Bank is uh to sell the debt that the city ultimately uh makes a decision on issuing, and so we would sell that debt to uh institutional funds and other investors in the market, right? That would purchase the city's debt. Um and um Catherine, who will uh absolutely be part of this presentation. I don't mean to monopolize it. Um but as bond counsel, she drafts all of the legislative documents and all the documents that we need in order to sell uh uh the debt into the market and raise the funds um for for your projects. So what we wanted to start out with, and and I know you have the books up there, so I apologize. You know, some of the some of the font is small. But we always want to present and make sure you're aware, at least have a resource to go to to see uh the amount of uh of debt the city has and what is exactly that debt. So starting on page what I believe five of the book, um there's the beginning of the city's debt profile, and the page that's on the screen right now is um or or it it is uh uh reflects sort of the the longest dated debt that the city has. So the city has borrowed over the years and currently has their oldest debt as a bond issue back from 2016. And so we'll come back and talk about that bond issue because it's eligible uh this year to be refinanced. And so you can sort of think about that as the ability, like if you have the ability to take advantage of lower mortgage rates on your house. We likely will have an opportunity later this year to take advantage of lower uh interest rates and refinance this issue so that the net, the net uh cost, or really in this case the net savings accrues to the city's benefit. So we'll talk about that because that is why you have bond legislation uh as part of this overall financial plan for this year. Um and it reflects sort of your oldest uh bond issue, which goes back to 2016.