Special Bd. of Aldermen — 11/26/2018 Page 8
Ms. Bell Absolutely, | spoke to some of those same people when we were investigating the Capital Campaign
many years ago. But! don’t want to be disillusioned and think that we have a bank account somewhere in the
City that has money in it when there is not. Yet we as a City do currently pay for operating costs of the
building, although they may be minimal of heat and electricity and that we do not yet have any funds for this.
So | just wanted to understand that fully.
Mayor Donchess
There are actually 10 apartments in the building, 5 of which are rented, so we are bringing in more money
through those rents than we used to bring in through property taxes. So there are funds to support the
operation of the building as it currently exists.
Fred Teeboom My name is Fred Teeboom, | reside at 24 Cheyenne Drive. | should say that | also own a non-
profit and | raised about $150,000.00 of private money, it took 4 long years for the Holocaust Memorial. Let me
just summarize a little bit more succinctly what this Resolution is about. It allows the $15.5 million dollar bond
to be used for the design before $4 million dollars is raised from private funding. It also allows New Market Tax
Credits to count towards the $4 million private funding. It allows private funding to be used for anything other
than exclusively operating costs. Those are good things but let’s take a look at them.
The New Market Tax Credits are really not private funds, they are really redirected tax money. Somebody gets
a tax credit, say $100,000.00 and they don’t pay that in taxes they pay that in contribution, same as paying a
charitable contribution. So it’s really not private funding. Now these changes, |’m not against them, | think they
are good things to do. Why wait for the design until the $4 million is raised? You might as well spend $1
million trying to design this thing, because if you are going to do it, you have to design it. You already spent $2
million dollars buying the building and the land, not even knowing if you are going to raise the $4 million
So these are good things. The problem that | see is the referendum of last year. In the referendum of last
year, and | have a copy of it, it says exactly what is in this resolution before you, before it is marked off. No
one in the City when they voted on this, was told about these changes. And I'd like to know, Mr. Mayor, my first
question, on what basis are you making these changes? Shouldn’t’ you go back to the voters and get them to
vote on this?
Mayor Donchess
You could do, it would take years, but in my opinion the people that voted for the project and it was a majority
would believe and | think even some of the opponents, you have kind of suggested so yourself, that it would
make sense to if you need to design the project to gain the funds that are necessary to proceed, that you
design the project. | don’t think that people would’ve said it wasn’t understood that we would need a design
project at the time this was proposed. So | think if that had been understood and it had said we could spend
money for acquisition and design rather than just acquisition, | don’t think people would have voted differently.
Mr. Teeboom That was not my question, my question was can you do this? Have you checked with your legal
counsel to see that you can make a change to a Resolution that was voted by only 1.5% by the way.
Mayor Donchess
The answer is yes, we have gone over this in detail with bond counsel, they are the people who decide
whether bonds can be sold. David can give you the name of our bond firm and we were on the phone with
them last week and today.
Mr. Teeboom How about Attorney Bolton? The City Attorney not the bond attorney.
