January 21, 2016
Dear Proposers:
We appreciate the interest you have expressed in this RFP, and we are very much looking forward to receiving a proposal from you.
Our administration met with our board last week, and our team would like to make you aware of an anticipated part of the decision-making process. Because your firm has expressed formal interest in submitting a proposal, our hope is to give you enough notice to prepare for a presentation on February 9th with our selection team. This approach is a little bit different than done in other districts, but it will help our team understand the options available and also compare and contrast the qualifications and capacity of each proposer.
We would like your firm to come prepared on February 9th to visit with our board and administration. We may also have a member of our audit committee as part of this selection team. We would like you to prepare and present a 30 minute presentation on a potential future bonding scenario and how you would recommend we structure the new bond sales and/or restructure our existing debt. Here are the basics to the scenario we would like you to prepare a recommendation for and present:
$20 million in new debt for facility related construction; this does not necessarily have to be G.O. debt. We would like to look at all options and make a recommendation as to the best debt structure fit for our district.
Recommend how to best structure existing and new debt to minimize the burden on taxpayers. As you know, this by far has the biggest implication on school district decisions to take on new debt. Tax impact at a minimum would include 1) annual tax impact on homeowners and businesses in our county, 2) overall total debt paid by taxpayers over the life of debt, and 3) impact upon our district debt margin and limit over the long-term outlook.
Recommend a plan that aligns our debt structure with a reasonable long-term building replacement plan for our 5 main school buildings. You'll find the age of our buildings in our CAFR. Assume a 50 year life on each building listed in our CAFR. What we're trying to avoid is the building replacement and debt pile up somewhere over the next 50+ years; so there's a reasonable debt plan properly aligned with the life of our buildings with an equal year impact on taxpayers. Don't get hung up on the 50 year life. If life of a building needs to be shortened or stretched out to develop a solid long-term plan, with minimal tax impact, that would be ok.
New Tax Incentive Financing Projects: There are several new CDA TIF solar energy private projects coming onto the tax rolls anytime now in our county. As of this morning, the county did not have values, but they expect to have information on this within the next couple of weeks. Your recommended plan may include new TIF values and tax revenue that will be available in the near future to help minimize the tax impact of the new bond debt. You'll need to do some research with our county on this. The best person to contact is Scott Albrecht, our county CDA specialist, at 435.438.6490.
You might consider reviewing our CAFR and budget reports for debt schedules and other related financial information for our district online at: Annual Budget, Financial, & Audit Reports
Assume existing market conditions in your presentation.
As we indicated above, the most important part of your presentation will be the recommendations you make to help minimize the impact upon taxpayers. Don't read into this scenario more than the above parameters. We realize there are many more elements that can be incorporated into your presentation and for the finance and accounting gurus, it would be easy to greatly expand upon this scenario. For this presentation, let's keep it simple. You'll be speaking to board members, our Superintendent, myself, and possibly one of our audit committee members on the selection committee. Gear your presentation to board members and our superintendent in terms of how you communicate and present your information.
Once we receive proposals on the 29th, we'll do a pretty fast follow up with each proposer in preparation for the Feb. 9th board meeting. But again, our hope is to provide proposers with this information now, so that you have ample time to prepare for February 9th.
If you have any questions, let me know. I can be reached by cell at 435.418.0346.
Thanks again for your interest in our district.