It is five o'clock, so I'll go ahead and get started.

Welcome to the city council study session for Tuesday, November 3rd, 2026.

We have four items on the agenda.

The first one is a discussion regarding next steps for the sale and issuance of voter approved bonds for a permanent shelter.

And uh somebody's here to present about it and answer questions.

Yeah,

City Tower Bond Councilmate Ellis is here to go kind of give you guys an update with regard to what the next steps in this shelter bond.

Okay, yeah, if you'd like to join the table.

Well, good afternoon.

Um I think you're all aware uh we got a positive ruling uh for the city's

from

the city standpoint on the litigation.

It's

appealed all the way up to the Supreme Court.

Uh if you'll recall, we attempted to issue the bonds last spring, close in June, and we had the litigation and it got appealed.

And so ultimately we had to cancel the sale.

Uh just wasn't any way to do that.

We wouldn't be able to get an attorney general's opinion on the bonds.

So we did that.

Supreme Court granted it

an

expedited appeal, and then it went into the black hole, and then it emerged a couple of weeks ago.

Uh so, but again, favorable ruling.

Uh they upheld the motion to dismiss uh that was granted at the district court level.

So uh we're ready to proceed.

So we plan to have on the agenda next Tuesday uh resolution that sets the sale date of the the bonds of the same amount, eight million dollars full amount, 20-year term.

Um, and then we'll come back on December 8th at the regular meeting that day.

We'll have the sale uh that morning.

I think 11 11 a.m.

is when the sale will occur, and then the results will be presented to the council that evening.

Uh you'll have a uh basically an agenda item to award the bid to the low bidder, uh, and then there will be an ordinance.

Um, just kind of for reference or recollection when we do geo bonds, we always do an emergency clause on the ordinance because we don't have a complete ordinance until we get the bond sale that morning completed.

So that's that's primary reason.

I mean we we have a draft of the ordinance done well in advance.

I mean, I've I've actually got it done.

I could I could send it if you wanted to see it, but again, it's gonna have blanks in there for purposes of the interest rate until the bond sale actually occurs.

So uh then so as a kind of standard procedure, um, adopt the um adopt the ordinance, adopt the emergency clause, which makes it effective immediately, which means then we transmit immediately the transcript to the attorney general's office.

Once they get it, they've got a 30-day, there's a 30-day contestability period, and then uh if no one files anything relative to that, hopefully no one I'm not sure what else there is to litigate at this point, but um then once that passes it will close.

So the plan would be to close June or sorry, January 20th.

So

Nate, can you just uh the lowest bidder, can you speak about that and why why that is if we have more than one bidder why why we would do

that?

So um general obligation bonds, they're statutory requirements that you have to put the obligations out to bid.

Uh we have to publish a notice in the newspaper, which I would say generally garners zero uh bids on it.

Um more importantly than the the financial advisor MFS, they post a proliferary official statement in the marketplace.

That's where all the bond underwriters and everybody exists, that's where they're looking.

And then based on that, they provide bids.

The there's a statutory duty on the part of the city to take the lowest interest rate.

I mean, if if somebody walks in and says I've got eight million dollars and I want to buy the bonds as an individual and they have the lowest interest rate, then they'll win the bid.

Uh

but it's but it's there's a requirement that as long as the bid conforms to the requirements, and as long as they provide the good faith deposit of two percent at the time the bids come in, um, then there's a requirement to award to that low bidder.

So if we get questions about why the city's goes with the lowest bidder, any government, I guess, but why has Norman go with the lowest bidder on projects?

Now, the part about lowest best.

Can you get into that at all about

well?

And that's that's a distinction when you have like a contractor.

It's a different kind of competitive bidding.

When you're doing public construction contracts, you have to advertise and you take the lowest and best bid.

That means if you've got a contractor that you you know doesn't know what they're doing, or their their bid seems just irresponsibly low, and it's clear that they're not gonna be able to complete the project for that, then you can provide that justification as to why you didn't select the low bidder on the record and then go with the again the lowest responsible bidder in that case or lowest and best bid.

But here it's just purely