A bill for an ordinance authorizing the issuance of (1) the “City and County of Denver, Colorado, General Obligation Elevate Denver Bonds” for the purpose of financing and defraying the cost of acquiring, constructing, installing and improving various civic facilities; and (2) the “City and County of Denver, Colorado, General Obligation Better Denver Refunding Bonds” for the purpose of refunding, paying, and discharging all or a portion of the City’s outstanding Taxable General Obligation Better Denver Bonds (Direct Pay Build America Bonds), Series 2010B; providing for the levy of general ad valorem taxes to pay the principal of and interest on such Bonds; and making other provisions relating thereto. Authorizes the issuance of City and County of Denver General Obligation Bonds, Series 2020A-B in a principal amount not to exceed $465 million for the purpose of funding approximately $170 million of Elevate Denver bond projects approved by Denver voters in November 2017, to refund existing Series 2010B Better Denver General Obligation Bonds, and to pay associated costs of issuance. Th
I move that I have to build 21 one of 60 ordered published. Thank you. It has been moved and seconded questions or comments by members of Council Council member Sayed Ibaka. Thank you, Madam President. First, I want to quickly explain to the public what a bond is. A bond is a loan. A city passes a bond to pay for a range of different things, from deferred maintenance to new capital projects. And in some cities, not Denver, but in some cities, housing. Once a bond is authorized by the voters, the city can draw on the loan to pay for those approved projects. The bond dollars are issued in phases, and this current issuance has been accelerated with the justification from the mayor that borrowing to complete projects during a global pandemic will jumpstart our economy. That, to me, feels like saying that when I'm unemployed, that. I. I should spend on my credit card. With no real way to pay it back in order to jumpstart my life. Some of us spend our money that way. And with personal finances, that's a risk. And the risk is much lower. But when we do that as a city, we place that burden of paying our annual loan payment of hundreds of millions of dollars over the collective power of the taxpayers. And so right now, our taxpayers are struggling. They were struggling before COVID. Skyrocketing property taxes are at the root of involuntary displacement and rent hikes. So I, in good conscience cannot approve an accelerated issuance that will saddle our taxpayers with more debt as a city in such uncertain times, times that are calling for a much more careful spending and attention toward an uncertain future. So I hope that my colleagues tonight will see the wisdom in not spending beyond our means in the middle of this crisis and allow us some time to recalibrate as a city before we issue more debt. Thank you, Madam President. Thank you, Councilwoman. We've got councilwoman. Blackout. Thank you. Madam President, I was just wondering who might be in the meeting from the Department of Finance to talk about the legalities of this bond. It was approved by voters in 2017, and we have ten years to complete the projects. And so I think Michel Johnson might be on the call and she can address that. Or maybe somebody else. I'm not sure whose this is. Michelle. Yeah. Oh, there's Michelle. Go ahead, Michelle. Know. So thank you, Councilwoman CdeBaca, for your comments and Councilwoman. BLOCK for that. Just now. Your statement is correct. So once a jobs program has been authorized by voters, we do have ten years to issue the bonds before the program or before the authorization becomes viewed as stale. And so there is that time limit from when we when voters authorize the election in 2017. I also just note that, you know, our geo debt is currently well under the city charter limit of 3% of actual real personal property value. And in addition, you know, we our geo bonds are repaid by dedicated property tax mill levies. And the issuance of these new bonds does not change the amount of. Bond principle or bond interest, no levies that we plan to levy for 2020 or 2021 collections. So that doesn't change irrespective of whether these new bonds are passed through or not. All right. Thank you. Michelle, could you restate, Michelle, what city agency you're with, please? I'm sorry. This is Michelle Johnson with the. Department of Finance. All right, great. Thank you. Councilmember Black, do you have any follow up questions? And no, just that there also is sort of a refinancing element of this. Michelle, do you want to comment on that? Absolutely. So the. Item. For approval consists of two components. One is the name. And for the elevated bourbon program up to 170 million of PAS. And then the second component is about 290 million for the funding of our 2000 and the better bonds. And that portion is to achieve interest cost savings. Under current market conditions were anticipating the ability to achieve about 57 million of net present value savings on the refunding piece, which is pretty significant. And as we talked about in committee, you know, from a debt management perspective, we do look to combine refunding opportunities with new money issuances to save on cost of issuance and for efficiencies . And so these two are drafted together under one bond ordinance and is combined, if you will, for or. Approval under this item. Thank you, Michelle. All right. Thank you, Councilwoman. Councilmember Hines. Thank you, Madam President. Councilmember Black actually asked some of the same questions that I was going to ask. I do want to say. I do want to ask, though. You mentioned it's $57 million in savings from the restructuring. Is that what. Could you translate that into a percentage? Absolutely. That's about. 19.7% of. Our refund in bonds. Have you, in your experience, ever gotten that or realized any where near that kind of cost savings from bond issuance or bond restructuring in the city of Denver in your time? I've been. With the city since 2014 and. I have not seen our present value savings to that level. So this is this is pretty significant power to me. Okay. Thank you. I mean, I guess so. I have a financial background and I would say this is actually good for the citizens of Denver to take advantage of the interest savings from 2010 to the present, where we're we're saving more money for our citizens by doing this restructuring. Thank you, Madam President. Thank you, Councilmember. Councilman Ortega. Thank you, Madam President. So I wanted to ask a couple of questions and then make a statement. Michelle, are you still on? Mm hmm. She's okay. Um. So when I had my briefing, one of the questions that I asked was about our commitment to local hire. And by now. Making sure that we're working. Towards goals instead of just continuing to call all this a. Pilot project, we're well past the pilot in terms of ensuring that these particular projects. Which will create a number of. Jobs for people who work in the various construction. Fields. Will actually be paying livable wages to the people working on the site. And that has historically. Been one of the benefits of doing bond projects, particularly. When you're in. Economic times. Like we are now, because it's actually putting money back out into the community for, you know, all the various supplies as well as the wages that are paid, which then those workers spend money, you know, throughout our community as well. But can you tell me. Where. You guys are at with a commitment. To. Being beyond calling this a pilot. Program and now ensuring that we're setting goals on the hiring? So can you just speak to that? I think Scott. Retract from our team is going to take. That one woman. Okay, Scott, appreciate you. And I'm sorry I didn't give you a heads up that. I was going to raise this again tonight. But since it was called out, I thought I would just. Piggyback. On on it being called out. To ask where we are. You're. You're missed. I can't hear you. Councilwoman. Can you hear me now? Yes. Great. Thank you for that question. This is Scott Rich RATH on the program manager for the Elevate Denver Bond Program. And we're actually proud of the accomplishments we made when this was a pilot in its early issuances. Several projects that made up that pilot were Elevate Denver programs. Many of them were under contract for construction prior to the outset of the program. So they were, in some cases, for the contractors, volunteer voluntary programs. And nevertheless, our program management office works on a regular basis, monthly or more, with Marcus Johnson and the DOE group that spearhead the Workforce Development Program. We are pleased to say we will be moving from this pilot now and in fact, with issuance, four have targeted a number of projects that would be great candidates now to enable the city to firmly establish this program moving forward. In fact, just last week yeah, just last week, we shared that list with Marcus Johnson and the team. We have a meeting set for just after the scheduled adoption of issuance for if that should happen to go ahead and outline a plan for those projects that have capacity and ability to move into the workforce program. We've analyzed all projects that are 0 to 5 million of anticipated construction, 5 to 10 million of anticipated construction, 10 to 25 I'm sorry, 10 to 50 and 50 million or more. A lot of our large projects were early in the program. They were partnered with our city partners such as Denver Art Museum and Denver Health, which had large dollars of construction. Those were already under contract before the program launched. But we do, however, now have a number of city led projects with dollars in issuance for that would enable us to firmly establish this graduate out of the pilot program and into a more permanent program. But again, the Elevate Denver Bond Program will lead that. We will be a partner to Dito and and that workforce development team will will run point on that for both bond and non bond projects alike. So Scott, can. You identify kind of what that percentage looks like. Of those projects that will. Incorporate the. Commitment to. Local hire? Yes, I can I can speak in rough terms from number of projects standpoint or a project count standpoint. It will be relatively small. There are over 450 total projects within the ten year program. But from a dollar amount standpoint, it will be substantive. Perhaps when all is said and done, more than 50% of the dollars would be eligible to participate in this program. Looking forward, we have large projects that have more than $15 million of construction, such as Westwood Recreation Center, that would become part of the program. So when, you know, when we tally up the total dollars, it will be a much larger percentage than if we look at the individual projects we have. As you know, Councilwoman, a number of projects that are from $50,000 irrigation sprinkler renovations to $250,000 paving projects where we're just laying asphalt. Those are not ripe opportunities necessarily to put large numbers to work. But the bigger projects, particularly those that are vertical construction projects, recreation centers and whatnot, will provide great opportunity. Thank you for that. I just wanted to make us a statement and that is that in my number of years with the city. Almost 40 years with the city. I have never seen our interest. Rates this low that allow us to take advantage of being able to do. The refinancing and save money that. Councilman Hines just talked about earlier. So this really is a great deal for the taxpayers. Because it's ensuring that these projects are going to get completed. And as you all know, these are projects that were asked for by the residents of our city. There was a. Huge public. Outreach to the residents asking. For input on what should be in this bond package. And so these are. Projects that will provide incredible benefit to our neighborhoods. I know Westwood has been. You know, waiting for that recreation center for many, many years. And so I just want to say I'm delighted to support it tonight. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman. Councilman Flynn. Thank you, Madam President. Most of what I wanted to say has already been said, so I'll be very brief. I would have thought that the effectiveness of stimulus spending, infrastructure spending, would have been adequately demonstrated by FDR 90 years ago. But more recently, we have the lesson of the better Denver bonds that were put out in 2007, approved in 2007, and carried out in the in the ten year period after that during the Great Recession. And what we found what the team found was that not only did the bids and the work come in under our budget , under our estimates, but it also allowed us to pool those savings and do even more projects. And now that we are in another recession, now is the perfect time to provide jobs. And and to echo Councilman Himes, it's also the perfect opportunity to lessen the impact on taxpayers by refinancing at a lower interest rate and paying them off earlier. So this bill makes makes complete sense, and I urge every member to support it. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Flynn. Councilwoman CdeBaca, you back up? Yes. Just wanted to thank you, Madam President. Just wanted to throw some final words out there. There is a relationship in the in the world that we're ignoring when when these rates go down, they're going down for a reason and incentivizing us to take out more debt at the same time in exchange for that cost savings that we're perceiving. And so for regular people out there, it's like a cash out refinance of your home where you basically take out equity, more equity in order to pay back on, but you're buying down your points. And so it's a relationship that I think cancels itself out in the long run if we're still borrowing while we're experiencing some kind of decrease in our percentage rate. And so just wanted to throw that out there. I understand people feel very differently across the country and in our city about debt. And so still, I'm a no appreciate you all humoring me. Thanks. All right. Thank you, Councilman. Councilman Clark. Thank you. I'm sure I just will respectfully disagree with the two analogies that have been used. This is very different than taking out credit card to spend where you would have to pay for that. We have a dedicated source of revenue for this. This is not eating into budget for anything else like you would if you're spending on your credit card. And now you have to choose between spending this money or that money so that that analogy is not relevant to what is going on here, nor is it accurate. And also, this is not a cash out refinance. This is refinancing our existing debt to lower our payments, reducing the total cost that Denver taxpayers will have on a suite of things that Denver voters already approved with with that revenue stream. So this is also inaccurate. I just wanted to be on the record saying that both of those analogies were inaccurate representations of what is happening here. This is a refinance of existing debt, which brings our costs down. This is spending that can go to jobs of work that is already done and comes from a different revenue stream and is not eating up something else in the budget as increasing credit card spending when you have a decrease in income would be. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Councilman Clark. Councilman CdeBaca. Thank you, Madam President. Just to go on and clarify, it is the same thing because we're refinancing debt and taking out more debt, and it is similar in that we float the mills. So the city sets the multiplier when we're deciding what to multiply our assessed values at. And so that is something that directly affects the taxpayers at any time, especially during a crisis like this. So thank you. Thank you. And just a quick reminder for folks, we've got two more items on the call out and then three hearings tonight as well. And so thank you, Councilman Councilman Hines. Thank you, Madam President. I would agree with Councilmember CdeBaca that we are refinancing, that. I would disagree with Councilmember CdeBaca. We are not taking on any more debt. We are only doing what the people have already told us to do. Thank you, Madam President. Thank you, Councilman. Madam Secretary, roll call, please. CDEBACA No. Clark. Hi. When I. I. Hi. I. Katherine. I can eat. I. Okay. I. The end of all. I so. I saw it. I. Black I. Madam President. I. Madam Secretary, close the voting and announce the results. Well, that that's one day. 12 eyes council bill 1106 has been ordered published. The next item up is Bill 855. Councilmember CdeBaca, please go ahead with your questions on Bill 855. Thank you, Madam President. I am curious about the source of funds for this agreement. Is this the tax, the the revenue source that we had voted on for basically to address food injustice? We've got a line up, I believe, to answer. Akhmatova's in a difficult please. I'm Leanne Sadowski and the food systems administrator with the Denver Department of Public Health and Environment. And I'm overseeing this project, also known as the Food and Communities Project. This is not synonymous with our Healthy Food for Kids Tax Initiative. There is a separate initiative that was voted for on the ballot and has established approximately $11 million a year to go towards healthy food for kids and related tuition. Education. Councilmember Torres and Councilmember to sit on the commission for that tax fund. This project is a neighborhood based community food project where we've been working with communities in the east and West Colfax area and in the surrounding jurisdictions as well. To hear from them about their concerns and needs when it comes to community food, to set goals, to establish action plans, and to support community based pilot projects as well as long term policy change and systems change around supporting community food access in those areas. So the grant is citywide, but the pilot projects you're currently working on are both in District three. They are. Peter, remember my. Council district that I. Had there in the East Colfax area and the West Colfax area? So they are sort of the East Coast, northwest, Aurora area, Lakewood. Barnum sort of neighborhood's awesome. And who are the primary partners on both sides of Colfax? Yeah. So in the communities we're working with a number of different community based organizations in each of the focus areas, as well as with the local public health agencies in Jefferson County and the tri county health department. So in the the West Side neighborhood, we are working with the Sun Valley Community Commission, we're working with the Lasko Housing Development, we're working with the co-op at first Community Organization, just to name a couple. And then on the east side we're working with Eastside Neighborhood Association. Ah, and oh they're, we're working with partners like the Village Exchange Center and several in. Northwest Aurora. As well. So it's a, it's a mix of different kinds of partners depending on the communities. And some of those partners have received grants to pilot projects in those neighborhoods. Awesome. Thank you very much for that clarification. That's it for my questions on that one. Madam President. All right. Thank you, Councilman. The next item up is Bill 1194. Councilmember Torres, will you please put council Bill 1194 on the floor for publication? A move that canceled the 20 dash, 1194 be ordered published.