Gainesville OKs $4.5M for streets, sewers

Mar. 22—The city of Gainesville has sold bonds to help pay for street and utility system improvements.

The results of the sale of approximately $4.5 million in bonds were presented and approved at Tuesday's city council meeting.

"I'm pleased to report that the city received six different bids, with BOK financial coming in with the lowest proposed true interest cost of 3.65 percent," said Marti Shew from Hilltop Securities, the company that handled the bond sale. "Just to give you an idea, we like to see a minimum of about three bids; that's what we consider a successful sale."

Rates were competitive due to the good standing of Gainesville's credit and finances.

"We've had a lot of volatility in the market," said Shew. "This rate is significantly below the preliminary estimates we were using for planning purposes, and a very large part of the reason for that favorable rate and and response from the market is directly tied to the credit rating of the city."

More details on how the city's financial state were presented at the council meeting as well. According to a financial audit from Pattillo, Brown and Hill, LLP, everything is well accounted for and maintained.

A representative from PB&H explained how it wasn't necessarily their job to comment on how the city's finances are doing, and rather to ensure financial statements were accurate.

"In layman's terms," summarized Mayor Pro Term Ken Keeler, "[PB&H] had no findings, everything made sense, and the people that are working for the city who are responsible are taking good care of the finances."

Despite the auditors not officially being in a place to comment on the financial state of the city, it was mentioned that the city has about six months in reserves; PB&H typically recommends a minimum of three months of reserves.

"We have to remember, we just came off a very high year of sales tax," said City Manager Barry Sullivan. "Oil has been up these past couple of years, and when it's up, that's great, the sales tax stays up. But we have to remember ... depending on the day you can get hit very hard."

Due to the volatility of sales taxes, property taxes and oil, particularly with the amount of oil and gas equipment in the city, Sullivan explained that although the written policy is to try to keep 90 days worth of reserves, a group determined that it was better to try to stick to the 180-day mark.