Special Bd. of Aldermen — 12/20/2018 Page 14
Alderman Jette
And one last question if | could, where does the possibility of getting tax credits from Community Development
Finance Authority work into this?
Mr. Cummings
It doesn’t to be very clear. This is a whole separate process, this is a New Market Tax Credit Program. What
you are referencing right now is a State level, CDFA tax credit program and it is completely separate initiative
and strategy that will be undertaken above and beyond this.
Alderman Jette
So whatever money we might get from there and whatever money we might get from private donations are in
addition to this $19 million in the investment fund.
Mr. Cummings
You are very close. What | would suggest to you is it in addition to the $5.2 million. So yes and so surprise,
early on I’ve been saying — oh we are going to raise about $4 million dollars in New Market Tax Credit money;
what is being modeled, not definite is it looks like we are getting $5.2. So yes | always was very conservative
in talking to you about this, because | would rather come in under than be wrong.
Mr. Cannon Imagine another box over here full of dollars and an arrow that goes there, that’s where anything
else goes into the project.
Mr. Cummings
That’s right.
Mr. Cannon But it doesn’t get funneled through the system, and the reason you can’t funnel, you can funnel it
through the system, whether it be additional bond money or the CDFA money which | have done a lot of
projects with, it goes through the system, it goes into the intermediary lender who might have several sources
of funding and then into the system. The reason here is we don’t want this number to be greater than $18.5
because if we start to approach $20 million dollars, it is not going to be competitive. That is a big project. Most
CDE’s get an allocation of about $60 million, we’d be asking for 1/3 of the total allocation if we got the $20
million. So we are sort of fixing it at $18.5.
Mr. Cummings
So if | could just to finish up, so that $5.2 on top of that would be if we are lucky $2.5 and that is where the
CDFA tax credit would come in, so $5.2 plus $2.5.
Alderman Jette
With what we are looking at here, so this looks like it would raise all the money we would need to build the
Performing Arts Center and the additional tax credit money, the additional private donations could be used
possibly to pay the lease payments that would go back up here and pay off the bond.
Mr. Cummings
