We just gonna how do we handle that?

Mr.

Fale and Mr.

I looked at them and I'll make a motion.

You make a motion.

I was here for the meeting.

John, you're making a motion, correct?

I'm making a motion.

Okay, a motion from Mr.

Mr.

I second it.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Minutes are approved.

Item number one, new business.

We've got approval of disbursement for district two improvement funds for para.

The total is two thousand dollars.

Any discussion about that?

I'll make a motion.

Got a motion and second.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Item one is approved.

Item two is approval of a disbursement from District 2 improvement fund for Alpha Chapter.

Clubs of Tuscass County, total thousand dollars of motion.

Second, all in favor say aye.

Aye.

Item three is approval, disbursement, district two improvement funds for bridge builder friendship foundation.

Total $1,500.

Do I hear a motion?

Motion.

I'm sorry.

Got a motion and a second.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Item four is approval of the disbursement from District 2 improvement funds for central high men's basketball.

The total is a thousand dollars.

Do I hear motion?

Motion.

A motion, second.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Item five, approval of disbursement from district two improvement funds for central high school auxiliary.

The total is fifteen hundred dollars.

Motion second.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Item number six, approval of disbursement from district two improvement funds for Jeremiah's Garden.

Total $1,500 to her motion.

Motion, second.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Item number seven, approval of disbursement from district three improvement funds for Vernary Elementary.

Totals $2500.

What questions would you like answer, Mr.

Fale?

School stuff.

Yeah, school stuff.

Okay.

I make a motion then.

Got a motion.

Second.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Item eight is approval of disbursement from district three improvement funds for Rock Cory Elementary School.

The total is $2,500.

Motion.

Second, all in favor say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Item number nine is approval for disbursement of district three improvement funds for Northridge Middle School.

Total is $2,500.

Motion.

Second.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Item 10 is approval of disbursement from District 3 improvement funds for Northridge High School.

The total is $2,500.

Motion.

Second.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Item number 11.

Are you with me, John?

Still?

More or less.

Okay.

Approved.

Like our foreclosure cell, everything must go.

Credit, credit, credit.

Wait a second.

Approval.

Disbursement District 7.

Improvement funds for Elevate West Alabama.

The total's $5,000.

Councilman Lanier, would you like to tell us about elevate West Alabama?

Yeah, elevate Alabama is mentoring program or cross mentoring program where you have this that's set up in central high school right now.

They cross-train mentors there to mentor the kids at university uh place and central elementary.

They're one of the only organizations really in the Southeast that does has a peer mentoring model.

That's good where they train high school students to meant to middle school students.

It's great.

Also train their mentors to work with the high school.

So they adjourn on the peer mentor model.

That's great.

I'll make a motion.

Second.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Eleven item 11 is approved.

Thank you.

Item number 12 is general fund bit budget revision number three.

Carly.

Thank you.

I'll move for that.

Do any other council members want to put any other uh options for district improvement up for consideration?

Because they seem to be flying today.

Basically, I think it's good we're having a line of credit.

No, no, no, no, no.

Let's not go there.

Um, okay, so general fund budget revision number three.

This one should be pretty easy.

If um the council will recall uh the TPD will receive certain equipment from uh military surplus that they are they receive it free of cost, they are allowed to use it for a certain number of years and then they we can sell it at auction.

Any of the sale proceeds that we get from that military surplus equipment must then be used back into law enforcement, so we segregate that money, and sometimes TPD will ask us to be able to activate it to be able to purchase certain equipment.

That is what this uh budget revision is for.

There's a total of uh $393,000.

Um, and then the uh attachment in your agenda item will detail out all of the equipment that they are requesting to purchase and their price amount for it.

Questions, committee member.

I don't have any motion if you want.

I'll second all in favor say aye.

Aye.

Item 12.

It's approved.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

I do have a quick not about this.

What about the helicopters?

We have to go back to uh program.

That's what I thought.

So I think that's what I thought.

You're ready?

Yes, sir.

Item 13 approval of contract with the arbitrage group for arbitrage earning determination.

Carly.

Yes, sir.

So every year, in regards with our audit procedures, we engage the arbitrage group to do arbitrage earnings calculations.

Arbitrage basically is a an agreement that we have with the federal government when that when we release uh debt that is considered to be non-taxable, we are not allowed to earn money more than the amount of of um interest expense that we are paying to the bondholders.

And so the arbitrage group will come in and do projection calculations for us to say whether or not this debt issuance or that debt issuance is on track to earn or uh or be required to pay back arbitrage amounts for each issuance.

Um we contract with them annually, and we are required to disclose that we do this within our financial statements.

Um this year is the the price for the arbitrage group is $1,500 per issuance, which is the same that it has been in prior years.

We have um I think seven issuances that we're covering this year.

Um, and and a couple of those are that are the newer issuances that we just did, they'll even be able to project into the next couple of years whether or not they're going to be a problem for us.

Um problems really come about.

We have had arbitrage uh pay rebate payments that we have had to make in the last couple of years.

I think this last year we had about $12,000 that we had to pay back to the um U.S.

Treasury, basically because we we borrowed money at a lower interest rate than we're earning in the interest bearing accounts that that money sits in.

The way that the markets flow, sometimes that just happens, but we usually pay that amount out of the interest earnings, so the city is actually not out in cash.

Um we just paid out of the earned interest, correct.

Um we are just asking to execute the annual agreement with the arbitrage group, and the amount to pay for this contract is within um ANF's outside services.

Very probably a longer explanation that you've got to do.

That's very very thorough explanation.

Do I hear any questions from committee members?

I think that's pretty self-explanatory.

Do I hear a motion?

Committee committee member motion, second.

All in favor say aye.

Raven, you're back.

Please come by.

All right.

Item 13 is approved.

Item 14 is no of our funding discussion.

Thank you, Carla, for this.

And I have a handout for this one.

Yes.

No, we allow them now.

Yes, ma'am.

Oh, yeah.

Thank you.

Spreadsheet.

Well, there's a table in this one.

I want to say it's a spreadsheet.

We'll put that on his desk.

Sure.

Okay, so um, a couple of months ago when we were when we were discussing the NOAA's ARC 2.0 funding, the mayor's proposal detailed out a two-phased approach.

Really the beginning phases to start um design and planning procedures for the individual projects that were chosen, and then a large debt issue is a couple of years into the design process when we really know what those costs, those product cost estimates would be in the future.

Um we penciled in about $15 million into the phase one approach, um, and then the full uh debt issuance would be about $50 million that we would then use to reimburse us for the $15 million that we use early.

And so uh Mr.

Busby asked for a couple of options about how to accomplish this, and those options are detailed really in front of you.

You know, the easiest option really is to discuss a line of credit.

Uh, we have a couple of banks that we work with pretty closely that we have some um preliminary conversations with just about what the rates currently are.

Please know that for any line of credit that we will issue, we will have to do a full RFQ process, and so that will add to a timeline consideration.

Um, but just knowing what the rate market looks like currently, um, we have gotten about a 3.91% quote on what the market is holding at the moment.

If you take that uh 3.91% and you factor it over a gradual usage of a $15 million line of credit credit over about 30 months, um over those years, it looks like we would pay about $782,000 in interest that we would need to budget within either elevate or the general fund to be able to pay for.

Now we can juxtapose that with the idea that we do have some large projects that are earmarked that are sitting in Elevate that are not yet active.

They're still in the planning process and they will not be active for at least another year, possibly a year and a half.

Um total amount, especially within the University Boulevard project, which is really the largest one that's sitting in Elevate, University Boulevard West portion, so the campus side portion has about 4.4 million dollars sitting in it that we will not need until the middle of about 2027.

So we could use that cash early on for the NOAA's Ark planning process and design process in order to not incur the interest expense for the line of credit.

Um now we do have an opportunity cost with that.

We could invest those funds in some interest bearing accounts, and we would earn possibly about 300,000 per hoje now.

Obviously, the interest market will do crazy things between now and then.

I can guarantee you that.

So that really is just our best guess estimate at this moment.

So really my my recommendation to the committee is to use the cash, use the 4.4 million that we have kind of set aside for for early design costs, and then when either that money runs out or the University Boulevard West Campus portion is ready to bid, we will then take out our line of credit if necessary, or maybe we might are far enough along that we could just do the full bond issuance for NOAA's Ark at 50 million.

And then pay the money and then pay us pay the money back.

Correct.

Something too, I think for the committee and really the council to absorb.

But to me, it kind of makes I have to I gotta think about this.

But to pay less interest expense, you've got opportunity cost.

I I get that, but I would delay doing that line of credit until you have to do it, right?

That's that is my recommendation.

Yes, sir.

But I think that's a great fall back.

We would never probably have to borrow as much money on a line of credit if we do that.

I don't think we still may have to, because we need to get these projects rolling.

We do so but if you had to, you could always go back and borrow them.

That's right.

But I mean, I would think the last thing would be a line of credit.

But I mean, I think that's actually like what we talked about initially when we start talking about this.

That's probably could have to happen, and it might not, depending on the timing, right?

It just it really depends on on how long it takes to plan the drainage projects and then where University Boulevard campus portion really goes.

Because it that way, none of the construction was delayed of getting started.

We should have enough money to do it, right?

Correct.

And and and uh if we're gonna walk down this path a little bit more, a couple of a couple more pieces of details to fill in.

Um, the funding that is about the cash that's available to use within Elevate right now, um, we could activate by a reimbursement resolution from the council next week.

Um, like I mentioned with the line of credit, there's a full RFQ process that you'd like usually like to advertise for at least two weeks.

You'd need a review of those RFQs, and then you'd have to come back to council to consider all of the options and then award.

That could be another month in the process, um, which we are entering into holiday season.

Um, so maybe you know, we could possibly like work more with council meetings, but it's another consideration to add on to that we could activate really starting next week if we needed to.

But you would have if the time came that we needed more money, you're gonna know in plenty of time where we don't really miss a beat.

I mean, even if that's next year or next summer or whatever, you come back and say, hey, well, we're running out of money, right?

Yes.

That's when you'd activate this so that we don't miss any momentum in any of these projects.

We we when we do these scenarios, what we normally do is we will give the project managers, the engineers and the project managers a certain spend amount, and we will review that what they do spend monthly with them.

Um, we did this with water and sewer over it with an $8 million um you know picture, I think about two years ago, and we just did the bond issuance, and so that kind of helped us delay uh an extra $75 million bond issuance for water sewer and saved us a little bit of interest money on that.

Um, but generally what we do is we give them a spend amount.

You cannot spend, you can you can contract, but you cannot spend on those contracts past this amount of money, and we will timeline out with all the contractors what they plan on invoicing us up on that process.

Carly, in this I mean, best case where we're sitting right now.

When would you think that we would be going to the bond market for this total project?

For NOAA's Ark.

I think that the general um idea was 2028.

That's pretty good.

But with option two, we can go ahead and start now.

Start now.

On both options, we can pretty much start in the next couple of months.

Option number one with the line of credit, we might not be able to start for a month and a half.

But with option two, we can probably start next week.

But either which way we will start quickly.

But with option two, we'll pay less interest and we can start right now.

There may be opportunity cost.

Self-evident, not all drainage projects are created equal.

Riggs Road, for example, maybe a project that can be done in the next 12 to 18 months versus phase three of Cyprus Creek, which is an eight or nine million dollar project and require a ton of permitting from Corps of Engineers.

So having that flexibility to move some of these projects forward, and if we can utilize cash first, and then if we have to use an LOC as a backstop.

That's right.

And that's just that's just an example because your needs are immediate and where we can solve problems.

Let's solve them in today's cost.

So I'm not a big financial guy, but number two makes I like options two lots of things.

I think that I think that's quite a really than having to do the other and then evaluate because usually I mean they do it right.

I mean, it's gonna take them a little while to evaluate what we get and bring it back to the committee, and then we're gonna have to vet it and then we're gonna have to do it.

I mean, I mean, I I don't have a problem with us.

I would like to get, I mean, the chairman will weigh in.

I don't I don't I can't see that he'd have a problem with option two either, but but we can I think we should move forward.

Okay, and that'll get us the um all of the preliminary stuff, the designs and all of it uh so what so if we're next steps would be if if option two were to pass, the next step really would be that there's going to be a reimbursement resolution on city council agenda for us to do the full issuance for NOAA's R so the full $50 million, and that we would then to know that we would then reimburse ourselves with when we do the bond issuance.

It just allows us to do that.

So then we will create the budget line items for OCE to kind of go forth and start their who they want to contract with in engineering firms to do planning process.

Um it would even allow us to do some right-of-way acquisition if we needed to.

Um, but so those would be next steps was would be reimbursement resolution and then budget creation for OCE, and then you would start to see OCE come to you with recommendations for contractors.

But if we don't move forward with this, it would take it would be a while to have to go through that.

It'd be an extra month, month and a half.

Um, and again, like again, holidays, what bankers are doing during holidays.

Yes, I think we should move.

Should we out here?

Excuse me.

I know we can't have scores.

No, but you you are asking for it, but I'm not taking the date yet.

Exactly.

No, I mean serious, all joking.

So what other questions do we have for Carly?

Because I think this is what do we need to do to move forward?

I I think what I need to hear is a motion that we want to do option two.

So options any discussion.

All in favor say aye.

I option two is approved.

I will bring the reimbursement resolution back to this committee next time.

And then would you help me uh brief Mr.

Buzz brief the the chairman?

I sure will.

I like to call for suspension of the rule committee or what could we do?

We're up to a gotta be so scary when Bobby gets up.

I don't know.

We might be maybe getting in trouble.

Um, thank y'all.

That was a good discussion.

Um, our next finance committee meeting will be next Tuesday, November the fourth.

Is there any other items to be brought before this committee today?

Hearing none, I would entertain a motion to adjourn.

A motion.

Motion.