[Editor's Note: This is part 3 of a series of articles on the Grant County Commission work session on Sept. 12, 2023 and the regular meeting on Sept. 14, 2023.. This article begins with the work session review of the regular meeting agenda.]

By Mary Alice Murphy

County Manager Charlene Webb, at the Sept. 12, 2023 Grant County Commission work session, began the review of the regular meeting agenda.

She said the first item of business on the agenda is a Public Hearing on authorizing the issuance and sale of Grant County general obligation bonds. "David Buchholz of Rodey Law Firm is here to talk about the bond issuance process and answer any questions you might have."

"I am David Buchholz standing in for your bond counsel Luis Carrasco who is in Asia on a well-deserved vacation," Buchholz said. "We work together and I am very proud of his work. He has been my partner for the last six or seven years. I cannot be here for the regular meeting on Thursday, because I need to attend Gov. Richardson's funeral. I believe your financial advisor, Mark Valenzuela will be here. You have a substantial amount of paper to review, but it is a relatively standard process you're going through. Your county voters approved a $8 million bond package last year, which will be paid off through property taxes. Today we will discuss issuing $2 million. The ordinance you will consider addresses using the funding for planned transportation projects and water, sewer and landfill systems. Most of the heavy lifting on this process is put on your county manager. What you will do is approve delegation of authority to your county manager to sign the sale of the bonds. We have put a draft in your packet."

He noted the sale of the bonds will go either to underwriters or banks going forward. "An underwriter would be chosen through an RPF (request for proposal) process. Going forward there will be a security document, knows as an official statement. Again, it's an important document, but relatively standard. It will look a lot like the one you used in 2019, the last time you went into the market to sell general obligation bonds. I encourage you to look at the document and ask any questions of your country manager or us or your financial advisor."

"Interest rates are higher now, but I would ask the financial advisor to discuss this with you," Buchholz said. "But I understand you just made the final payment this month on bonds from 2014. So you have the capacity to issue these bonds and not have a material effect on your property tax rates."

District 5 Commissioner Harry Browne asked about the 63 pages and the 5-page memo. "It's kind of scary."

Buchholz said it lays out the commission responsibilities. "It would be scarier if I just came and said, 'we're going to sell bonds.'"

Browne said as he scanned the document, it seemed the official statement is an important document.

Buchholz agreed and said the statement is attached as an exhibit. "It is a work in progress to make sure all the financial information is correct. I believe we are in the middle toward the end of presenting a document that we say it is appropriate for you to go forward with the bond sale. At the closing, we deliver a 10b-5 document, which is a letter that says, other than the financial information, that nothing has come to our attention that this is not an appropriate document to use."

Browne said he is curious: "We approve this ordinance on Thursday, then there is some refinement of this statement?"

Buchholz said that is correct, and "we hope within the next couple of weeks that if there are any questions, you bring them to us with your concerns. They should be addressed to my office, the financial advisor's office or your county manager's office so we can address those questions to the satisfaction of the commission before we use the document in public."

Webb said: "What has been done in the past is I send it to you to review. It presents the financial snapshot of the county to show someone that we are worthy for them to buy our bonds. A lot of the information is taken from our audits. They want to know how much debt we have, those sort of things. It's something Linda and I have been working on for a month or so. It basically is a snapshot of our financial health. It's based on audits and such and is not just something we just come up with. There are constant revisions to make sure it is the most current information available as we sell these bonds publicly."

Browne said he has a last question for Buchholz: "and you can dodge this if you want. A couple of bullet points tell us to pay particular attention to certain portions. Are you able to tell us which portions we need to look at?"

Buchholz said he would try to give some guidance. "As far as legal details, we are comfortable that our own review is adequate. On the other hand, to the extent that you have information on operations of the county, such as potential litigation or something that you know about and think why didn't they say something about that, those are the provisions we would ask you to review. I'm fairly confident that what we present is accurate. It's like the statement, we want to know what we don't know. That's the most valuable thing you can do for me to make sure the document is correct."

Browne thanked him.

"Thank you. I'm happy to be here," Buchholz said. "It's a pleasure to be here."

Webb said that Valenzuela will be present on Thursday.

District 3 Commissioner Alicia Edwards asked when the anticipated sale is. Webb replied: "Mid-November."

The following article will get into presentations.

For previous articles, please visit https://www.grantcountybeat.com/news/news-articles/80266-grant-county-commission-holds-work-session-0912223-part-1 ; and https://www.grantcountybeat.com/news/news-articles/80291-grant-county-commission-work-session-091223-part-2