City Council - Regular Meeting

We'll call to order tonight's Committee of the Whole for the August 4th Auburn City Council meeting. City Council should have the minutes from the Committee of the Whole from July the 21st. Any additions to corrections to those minutes? If not, is there a move to approve? So moved. Motion second. All in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? And the minutes are carried forth. Questions on tonight's agenda for the City Manager? Does anyone on the Council have a question for the City Manager? Okay. City Manager, anything for us?

Meredith and I have anything for you this evening. Okay.

Is there a move to adjourn? I move. All right. We'll adjourn. For our audience, we'll get started right at 6 o'clock. Please visit amongst yourselves if you'd like to. We'll call to order tonight's Auburn City Council meeting for August the 4th, 2026. Welcome all of you that have joined us, members as well as those that are listening in WA&I or that are watching through our streaming services. With the roll call, Lindsay.

Adams.

Here.

Koblentz.

Here.

Dawson. Here. Griswold. Here. Moorman. Here. Parsons. Here. Taylor.

Here.

Whitten. Here. Anders.

Here. Would you please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance and remain standing for a moment of silence. Thank you. Earlier tonight during the Committee of the Whole, there were no official actions of business for the Council to consider. Under Mayor's announcements, I want to say thank you to Auburn City Schools. Recently, they've had two events, the new teacher breakfast as well as the Institute Day. Very encouraging to be around our new teachers and to be around the entire body of employees and teachers at Auburn City Schools as they get ready for the first day of school this Friday. Certainly appreciate the school board and their service to Auburn City Schools as well as the central office staff and looking forward to a great school year with our school system here. I want to say thank you to my friend David Housel who invited me to join his legendary group of men that get together at the back booth of Chappie's recently this week. A lot of good conversation talking to that group of folks and a lot of big fans of the Lake Willmore Community Center amongst them. I want to say congratulations to Tippie Miller and her team for another great United Way kickoff. United Way is an outstanding organization that supports so many worthy nonprofits in our community. There are ways that traditional ways of raising resources is a kickoff for your organization. I appreciate the fact that they line up inside the warehouse of the food bank and put together meals to distribute all over Lee County. I commend them for that, and I would ask you to consider contributing to the United Way as you think about those resources that you want to provide. I also want to say thank you to the Greater Peace Community Development Corporation. They had their annual fundraiser this past Saturday night at Greater Peace Baptist Church, and they're doing some tremendous work, and I appreciate their continued effort to make the Auburn-Appalachia area a better place. Certainly thank you to the Downtown Merchant Association and all of our attending staff and departments here at the City of Auburn a couple Fridays ago. Cheers on the corner. It was a wonderful evening in downtown Auburn. We actually got a break with some really great weather. There were some great crowds down there, and it was a great way to kind of culminate the summer as the next week's things started getting a little more serious as we got ready to go back to school. But a great evening. I want to thank our downtown merchants for staying open late and participating in a really, really great event. And I want to thank the chamber of commerce recently. They had a welcome to Auburn social where a number of new citizens to our community, uh, were there. It was fun and interesting to hear the reasons that people have landed here in Auburn and why they chose to be a part of our community and be excited. And I think the chamber for hosting that event and tonight, um, our police department is hosting national night out and, uh, that is their outreach to our community. as we get ready to go back to school, primarily with the youth of our community, and I appreciate the extra effort that our police department is doing to bridge relationships and partnerships with those people that live amongst us here in the city of Auburn. Anyone else have an announcement they'd like to make? Yes, ma'am, Miss Connie.

Okay. I just want to thank everybody that came out to my community award meeting last week. And I want to just give a special thank you for Mayor Ron Anders and City Council members Tommy Dawson and Kelly Grace Wall and Bob Parsons and your presence in the house. Also to Sharon Talbot and Representative Pevelyn Warren. Tamika Martin and Norman Sanders, the NAACP, who gave a lot of good information on affordable housing. So I just want to thank you again for being a part of that event that night.

Thank you, Connie. Appreciate your organization. I thought it was very informative. Good information. Yeah, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt.

That's okay.

Anyone else? One final announcement, and I say this every year. You know, this week is back to school week. We've got a couple of schools that are starting tomorrow. The public schools in Auburn will be starting on Friday. We have enjoyed a pace that has been different over the last eight or nine weeks in our community. We have realized that less people have been here, less students have been here, and all of that is about to rapidly change. And certainly on Friday, you'll notice how many school buses will get back on the roads. I just ask all of our community to be patient and to get up and start a little bit early in the morning and to prepare your trips as we all get used to a new rhythm of traveling in and around our community. The university is still a couple of weeks away from starting, but things that involve students are beginning in earnest next week, including actually summer graduation occurs on Saturday. And so it's all about to start for our community where the people are all coming back to town and to fill our city up. to the normal population levels that we're used to. And so for that to work for all of us, please think ahead, please be careful and, uh, please plan your day accordingly. Uh, it will relieve itself at some point in time and everybody will get used to a habit and get used to a rhythm and we'll get around a little bit easier. Okay. All right. At this time, we'll, uh, we've got a video that we'll talk about all of our outstanding employees. Thank you, Greg. We're proud to introduce you to our August Employee of the Month, and I have a memorandum here from Cynthia Ledbetter, the library director, naming Andrew Adams Employee of the Month. Andrew began his career with the city of Auburn in 2001 as a part-time library assistant before advancing into a full-time role. Throughout his years of service, he has consistently exemplified the city's core values through respect, professionalism, and servant leadership. Deeply committed to serving both the community and his coworkers, Andrew demonstrates respect, integrity, and professional excellence in every interaction. He is widely respected for his calm presence, dependable work ethic, and ability to connect with patrons of all ages. Citizens and colleagues frequently commend him for his welcoming demeanor and willingness to go above and beyond to help others, often volunteering to stay late or help cover areas in need. Known affectionately as Mr. Andrew, he makes a lasting impact by greeting visitors by name and creating an inviting atmosphere for everyone who enters the library. Beyond his daily responsibilities, Andrew has served on various employee committees, demonstrating his commitment to strengthening the organization. His willingness to contribute outside the assigned roles reflects his dedication to both his coworkers and the city of Auburn. Whether he is patiently assisting patrons with technology or enthusiastically stepping up to support a colleague, Andrew always demonstrates reliability. kindness, and exceptional customer service. His positive attitude, selfless leadership, and unwavering dedication contribute greatly to the success of the team, the library, and the city of Auburn, making him truly deserving of recognition as the employee of the month. Congratulations. We appreciate your hard work. Thank you. Congratulations to all of our employees. We appreciate the great job you do. Thank you to Andrew Adams for being recognized as our employee of the month. Thank you for making the library a special and unique place. And all the best to Joel Hare and Blake Taunton from our fire department who are retiring. Thank you for protecting us over the last 25 years. I'm not sure, is there a member of Auburn University here tonight that would like to make a university report? I know... This was a transitional week and might not. Okay. Then we will move ahead with citizens' communication on items on tonight's agenda. Pardon me. If you'd like to speak to the city council about any item on the agenda tonight, now would be the time for you to come forward. We'd ask that you come to the podium and give us your name and address for the record, and you'll have five minutes to speak to the council. Okay. We'll move ahead with city manager's communications.

Mary first under city managers communications. I'd like to, uh, extend my gratitude to our staff and development services and in our public works and water resource management departments, the West Magnolia, uh, quick repair project that lasts about 30 days at the council. Got an interesting email about, about a week ago. Um, it's not our intention to close a major arterial road at any time, but when we had critical repairs that needed to be made in the spring, We were able to put a Band-Aid on it to fix it this summer. We waited until after the World Cup match. And I'm proud, as we told you in your weekly news on Friday, that it opened as scheduled on Saturday morning as move-ins were beginning to happen. And so Contractor JLD, along with our city staff, worked tirelessly to make that happen. And so we really do try. to get in and out and not inconvenience people. And I know some folks had to pivot during the summer, but there is no other time to do this. So I appreciate the pivot. I'm sorry we had to close the road for about a month, but I think, I think we got it done timely and now it's prepared in a much safer situation.

Thank you. Thank you, Megan. Thank you to our great staff who made that happen.

So on our first item of business is a consent agenda. Does any council member wish to remove an item from the consent agenda and deal with that item individually?

Okay, is there a motion to approve the consent agenda?

I move.

Second. All right, we have a motion to second. Any further discussion? All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? And the consent agenda is approved. Ordinances.

Item 9A authorizes the issuance of $241,840,000 in general obligation warrants, Series 2026, for public school purposes within the city. For this item, there needs to be a motion and a second for unanimous consent then a roll call vote for unanimous consent. After that, a motion for approval, motion and a second for approval, then have discussion, and then the roll call vote.

I'll introduce the ordinance and ask for unanimous consent.

Second. All right, we have a motion and a second. Lindsay, with this time, would you go through the roll call for unanimous consent?

Dawson? Yes, ma'am. Griswold?

Yes, ma'am.

Foreman? Yes, ma'am. Parsons? Yes. Taylor? Yes. Whitten? Yes. Adams? Yes. Koblenz?

Yes, ma'am.

Anders?

Yes.

I move for approval.

Second. The motion is second. This time we'll open for discussion. If anybody has any questions that they'd like to ask the staff, we do have some guests here that would probably take questions, too, if we needed our friends from Frasier Lanier who helped us with this bond sale. Anyone have any questions?

Max, you mentioned before that. I do have a few questions, and I can direct those to you, city manager, and you can direct this to you from there. I wanted to kind of talk a little bit about the bond sale itself.

In our packet, it talks about the sale of the proceeds or use of the proceeds.

We had a sum of about $40.6 million that was going towards refunded bonds, and then the rest of the balance, about $214.6 million, goes towards the school project itself. So it's about $255 million total in proceeds versus the general obligation base value of $241 million. There's a net premium in there that I just kind of wanted to get a little bit further explanation on how that's derived, that net premium, when we go to market, how that happens necessarily, and to kind of what that net premium funds can be used for as far as this project is concerned.

I'll have Allison Edge, our finance director, answer those questions.

And I'll do my best. Frasier Lanier can help if we need it.

Yeah, we have Bob Young and John Mazik from Frasier Lanier, and I know sometimes the council would like to go over a little bit of an overview, so I recommend Allison and I answer some questions, but I think Bob and John do a great job of giving you an overview of the sale, how things were on the market, a little bit of volatility these days. They've been doing this with us for over 40 years. And so they're long-term partners and can explain a lot. So we'll have Allison answer, and then when we're done with some of those things, we'll have Bob come up. That'd be great.

Just to start with, we start any kind of debt issuance like this with understanding how much cash we need for our project. And so our debt is structured from that. So we start with what we need. When bonds are issued in the bond market, they're issued in a variety of ways. Some are at par amount, some are at discount, some are at premiums. There's a mixture of that. It depends on the market and kind of what investors are interested in buying. And then it's also interest rates and things like that, what the market rates. And so the debt is structured around what we need and the fact that we want the best deal for total all-in interest. And then we sell the bonds with our underwriter and investment banker. to meet that requirement. So sometimes we end up with premium bonds, but when we have that, we get more cash up front, and so the par amount is able to be less. And so it just depends on the structure. It depends on the market that day. It depends on a lot of things that go into that. So the premium and discount side of that can get pretty complicated, but that is what makes the par amount that we issue the debt for different from the actual cash proceeds that come in.

So the 14 or 13, 14 million is added in. It's kind of added into the project overall.

Yeah. So it, it contributes to the amount of money that we need. Um, and so they're issued as premiums that 14 million is used for the project. And it actually, um, when we have more cash upfront with a premium bond, then our par amount ends up being lower. And so then vice versa for a discount.

Okay. And then on the refunded bonds portion of that, how was the $40.6 million, how was that determined? How did we decide that those are the amounts, that amount we needed to refund?

Yeah. So this is actually a partial refunding. So it depends on, there's a lot of maturities in a debt issuance. And so it depends on whether specific maturities, whether it makes sense for those to be refunded. And that depends on the interest rate and, you know, that kind of thing. And so we have a threshold in which we will not refund unless we meet a certain amount of savings. And so we're constantly watching these, our debt issuances, to see when we can refund. After a 10-year period, we're able to do that and we're watching. So sometimes it makes sense for it all to be refunded, sometimes it doesn't. And so we look at that and decide which maturities to do, which is where we come up with the amount.

And the savings on this was how much?

About $2.4 million. Our kind of The informal goal there in our policy is to always have at least 3% savings when we do these refundings. This one gets close to about 6%. And so we need it to make sense to go through this process.

And this was part of the 2015 series that we did for school projects as well.

Yes. So 2015, it was for a school project. However, it was issued from the Special Five Mill Tax Fund. So any savings that we see from that refunding will go back towards the special five mil, which will likely be used for city projects in the future. Okay.

Right now, it's slated for the Richland Park project that we will issue in the coming years that Richland Park, at least about half of that project. And so this is replenishing the city's five mil. There is also a school five mil that is different, but that 2.4 million does go back into what we would call the city's five mil for simple terms.

Right. Kind of moving into the the funds that received specifically on the school project itself or placed in a depository account What is the investment strategy we have on or what kind of investment strategy can we have on that account specifically? and because obviously we're not paying all that to the contractor up front. We're going to pay that over the next two years. So there's opportunity there obviously for some earnings on that account.

Definitely. Um, we follow our policy that you, you all see in the monthly financials in a footnote. Every, every time we issue those safety is first, it's our investment strategy with liquidity being second earnings being last. I mean, when we're dealing with taxpayer money, the safety is going to be the most important thing to us. Um, we, And state law also limits what we can invest these proceeds in. And so we do our best to earn the most we can. We need it to be as liquid as it can be based on the kind of spin down, how that's going to happen over time. And we make decisions based on that. What we will have is a money market type account that's U.S. Treasury only because that's one of the safest investment accounts that we can use. And we will leave it there. We will earn interest. It's important to keep in mind that because this is tax exempt debt, the IRS limits how much interest we actually get to earn and keep. And so we have spend down requirements, things like that, that we have to monitor. Um, but if we're going through this process and spending the way we should, then we should be able to keep all the interest after this is done.

And does it have to interest iron is tied to the school project as well? It is.

Yeah.

Yeah. Is there any circumstance where that surplus can be released from the bond structure at all to be used for anything else?

It can. One of the great things about our bond attorney is that, um, our documents are written in such a way that if there are interest earnings, left over at the end. When we go into an issue like that, we count on interest earnings, but we don't want to count on those too much because you may not see those. And so if there's anything left over, our plan is to use that for the junior high that is coming soon. So we'll kind of shift that in that direction. And our bond documents allow us to do that.

Okay. And this may be more of a question for Bob or John, but the the 4.5 to all in interest costs that we got on this project or on this bond issuance specifically is that I'm assuming that was very comparable to the other 30 year paper, general obligation paper that was selling that week is where were we in the market from that standpoint?

I mean, I think it's a, was a great rate, but, uh, I'll let, I'll, I will actually let Bob young. Speak a little bit more to that.

Yeah, I would like for Bob to speak to and I'll let you know, you know, a lot was going on in the market with the Fed at that time and daily we were seeing market changes. And so part of what we rely on Frazier Lanier for is when to go to market. And it's something that they spend a lot of time on because we got our ratings in sooner than we went to market. And they were watching with their entire team, the optimal time to go in the market and things were moving almost hourly in the days leading up to this Bob and John go over a little bit more about that and what they saw.

Yeah. Uh, we do, uh, check on some of the credits, not only in Alabama, but throughout the United States. to give some guidance in terms of interest rates as to how you compare. And so in this case, because it was such a large issue, Megan and the mayor and Allison and Erica felt that it would be a good idea to have someone look at the rates outside of Frasier Lanier. They said, it's not like we don't trust you, but it's $250 million, and we want to make sure that it there's no question that these were market rates. And so the city engaged a firm to do that. And they were involved in the marketing process and looking at issues that were done around the country at the same time. And their opinion was favorable. And they had nothing to do with us in terms of selling the bond. It was only analysis of the interest rates. Okay. I think it's important. Um, to, to share with you all, John and my, and me, um, the process that you went through that the city went through in terms of obtaining your rating from both Moody's investor service and standard poor's corporation. These are the two, uh, recognized leaders in, in providing credit ratings for governmental issues, as well as corporate issues around the country. And normally what we do is have either a call or we visit them in New York to make a presentation. We felt like, and the mayor and Megan and the finance staff agreed, that because so much has developed here in a positive manner, that we should invite Buddhists and Standard Poor's to come to Auburn. and see for themselves what we've been talking with them about for a decade, because that's about how long it's been since they were here last. And so both Moody's and Investor Service and Standard & Poor's Corporation came down. They came in like on a Tuesday night and then We had a meeting at City Hall. It was attended by the mayor, Megan, Philip Dunlap, Erica, and Allison, as well as representatives from the school board to discuss the economics and demographics of what's going on here, the approach you all take to governing the city, and then to discuss, obviously, the finances to show them that, you were going to be able to pay this debt back from dedicated funds for school purposes, that this was not coming out of your general operations here. The mayor and Megan and Allison, Erica, and Phillip did an outstanding job. Then they took them out to really see what's going on. Went to various neighborhoods, went to different retail outlets, showed them the site for the school, the industrial parks that you all have. And the next week, we called representatives of each of these rating agencies, and frankly, they were blown away at what a wonderful place that you all have here. And they were incredibly impressed with the professionalism that was shown in the presentations in both. And I've got a couple of comments I thought would be interesting. Both Standard Poor's and Moody's present a report that is sent out to everyone that subscribes to their reports. And this is a couple of things said by Standard Poor's. Said the rating, which is double A plus, based on our view that the city's healthy financial performance and reserve reflective of its management team and their policies and practices. Additional strengths include continuing tax-based growth, diversification owing to population increases, and multiple residential and commercial developments in the city, further supported by Auburn University. They got to see all of that firsthand. Normally, we're just telling them about how great it is, showing them pictures. S&P May, uh, excuse me, Moody's, uh, we gave a double a two and this comment said the city's financial position will remain healthy over the near term due to solid financial management, conservative budgeting, budgeting, the positive performance would do in large part to revenue strength and tight expenditure controls. So it's not that you just grow in revenues and throw in money at whatever comes along. They saw firsthand in the presentations, particularly that Allison and Erica presented as well as Megan, how you all are controlling your expenditures. Things that you all take for granted, like your department heads being able to look online and see where they stand on their budget, is not normal. That's an added advantage that you all have to maintain your budget discipline, and it's not something that all governments in our state do. You all take it for granted. You should because you've been doing it for a long time, but it has really positive results, and those results are shown in the operations report And as well as what they wrote in these reports. So, uh, they were extremely impressed with what they saw here. And Ron was talking about, you know, having grown up here and being a small businessman and, uh, making this a wonderful place for people who live here now. And then those who do want to come here to live. to raise their family and enjoy retirement or whatever it might be. Hopefully a good football season too. So John had a couple comments he wanted to make too.

First of all, I've done this for 28 years and this is only the third site visit that I'm aware of. So it's pretty amazing they came here. They really wanted to see it. They've come to Tuscaloosa and they've come to Montgomery, but they're coming to Montgomery to see the state. So it's pretty amazing they came. They like what they saw. The analyst at the end of our meeting and before the tour discreetly asked Megan and Phillip if they would take them to Bucky's, this guy's from New Jersey. And we knew we had them then. They got to do that. Results of the sale were terrific. It was a very, very tough market. It's still a tough market. Allison had competitors of ours in her ears and also a paid, I'll put it in quotes, professional whispering in her ear. that the city might consider pulling the deal and waiting for calmer markets. Allison asked our opinion, which was to go for it. Things can get worse very quickly in this business. Allison made the gutsy right call, and we had a very successful sale. Since the day of the sale, interest rates have not gone down. They've gone up. You're a banker. You've watched this. They've gone up by 15 basis points across the yield curve. To put the impact of Allison's decision in dollars and cents, 15 basis points on a debt this big works out to $255,000 a year. That's $7,650,000 the staff and the mayor saved the citizens of Auburn by moving on and by trusting us and by trusting the process.

Very, very powerful and a great call by you guys.

Investors from all across America bought these bonds. They love what you're doing in Auburn. They're specifically impressed with the leadership here of the mayor and the council and staff. You're carefully managing pretty robust growth, and that's a challenge that you're up against every day.

You guys are doing it right, and it shows in a job well done.

So thank you all for your confidence in us. Any questions of me?

Question on the investors. You mentioned all across the country. Is it a lot of institutional investors, retail investors?

It's a lot of new names to your credit. Northwestern Mutual has never bought a bond from the city of Auburn. PIMCO never bought a bond from the city of Auburn. When you have something this big, it gets the attention of BlackRock, of all the big guys.

You've got a $20 million deal, they're not going to come in on that.

But, I mean, really from San Francisco to Boston to New York, very little local distribution in Alabama because the interest rates were so low. That's good for you. That means we're doing our job. So really, really robust. We hit the market at a time. We were lucky and we were good, both of them. A lot of deals got pulled that day. You guys heard that. People were just, you know, had a big deal for the New York Dormitory Authority, and they just stopped. They just said, this market's too much for us. And by pushing on, we became one of the last men standing. And they've got to put their money to work, and they did. So to your benefit. Great.

I think that John demonstrates an important point. Alice and I were texting. I was in the air coming back. And part of the decision point was they were recommending going tomorrow or pulling this. Also, it's not good if you pull a deal because it may signal that we are nervous somehow or uncertain. It is a lot of faith. It's a lot of numbers, but it's a long, long relationship with both our financial advisor, who normally doesn't advise. It's due to the size of the deal and the team at Fraser and our confidence in the market that we knew there was a big risk. Allison had the green light to do what needed to be done, but the big risk was that the market could get worse, which it has. We could have held serve just a touch longer on this, but we thought, what John's talking about, an over $7 million savings over the the term of the issue, we can't answer to you and the citizens of Auburn that we didn't do the best that we could do. And so we pulled the trigger on that day with the confidence of where we thought things would be and where we were advised they would be, and they landed there. And so it's an art and a science, and make no bones about it, we would have pulled out of the market if we thought we had to. But we kept the faith and stayed in, and I smile every day. It's not good for everybody else but for us. When I look at the market on a daily basis, I sleep better at night knowing that the basis point spread is getting larger in the moment. It's not good for other things, but it's good for us in this issue right now. In 10 years, we may be talking again about refunding of aspects of this, if it makes sense. Yeah, at the then time, but we are in a 10-year cycle. As Allison talked earlier, we can't, for 10 years, shift much of anything, and it is slightly different than the Lake Wilmore issue, which came in lower, but that was at a different time. That was two years ago.

What drives the 10-year cost decision as far as not shortening that maturity where we could call any earlier than that? Is that a market-driven decision?

What would you say?

The 10-year period... Why not shorten that to five or eight or whatever?

The market standard is a 10-year call.

We could do a shorter call, but you're going to pay for that. And it just doesn't justify it. Understood. Okay.

Got any other questions? Any other comments or questions for these guys? I don't know who this is for, but Allison alluded to this, but this is just the high school. This is just Plains High. Is that correct?

Well, there's two components. She'll speak to it. The main issue is high school, but there's also a refunding, which is other school debt. Yes, that's correct.

Right.

Yep. So it's mostly new high school. And then, as she also alluded to, based on earned interest and investments, we will likely flip some of this into the new junior high school as well. There will be a follow-on debt issuance in the coming months. year to two years uh... for the junior high school over a hundred million somewhere but it's going to depend on a lot of things and some of this depends on the spend down here and how we do but the way that we plan our debt from our you know i want you to be comfortable that our financial policies that we adopt drive the vast majority of all of this and they've always been conservative and always very responsible and very favorable to the rating agencies and so on is because of this fiscal discipline. So Allison is sizing this issue with our entire team to make best use of that, that money, uh, the premium money to make sure that, that we, again, best bang for the taxpayer buck. And so we spread it as far as we can go.

Correct.

So we'll revisit this again for the junior high and the middle school at a year or two or,

The junior high itself, yeah.

The junior high, yeah.

At what time period?

Well, they have already started. You did a reimbursement resolution for the site prep, and so it actually has bid as well, which is why she's mentioning an amount that's a little bit higher than we thought. But as soon as they are ready to start construction, you will see another reimbursement resolution, and then we have 18 months to issue after that. So we'll be thinking through the timing of that and what makes sense. The 16 mil can kind of handle that temporarily and then we would reimburse ourselves after that. So about a year, I think.

But I also want to while we're talking about this make sure i talked also about a richland road park a richland park debt issuance that's separate and apart from school debt and school that is not impacting our ability to issue that debt for other city projects infrastructure parks city facilities etc not not impactful there we still have the full ability to do that plus school debt that's right it's not chargeable against your debt and it's also

It's completely covered by the funding agreement, so it's a wash. You're just providing your excellent credit rating, which is the same. You've got a AA+. That's the same credit rating as a federal government.

So, John, if you're in rare air. Yeah. So one of our challenges is people say have the schools issue on their own. The problem for the taxpayers of Auburn is if we issue this under the schools, they will have to get their own bond rating, which would likely be lower, which means we pay higher interest, higher costs. And so it's costing the citizens of Auburn more money.

So we do this as more money. If the school issues these bonds on their own, that's that's a fact.

John standard and poor Moody's obviously come down here. They evaluate a city like Auburn and they're looking for weakness. They're looking for holes, right? And they are agnostic. They're not chummy. They're there do a job. And, um, would you just speak to that process and their mentality as they engage the community to do an evaluation like this?

Sure, they look at everything. I mean, they source social media. They know something about you guys. It's astonishing what they know. They got burned badly in the crisis of 08 by having artificially high credit ratings on a lot of stuff. As we all know, they shouldn't. And they have tripled down on their due diligence. There's just nothing. There's no rock unturned here. The questions they ask are extremely thorough. You guys are ready for them. They're not here to be your buddy. They're here to give an opinion that they're being paid to give. So it's a very, very thorough process.

Anyone else?

Well, I wouldn't think you'll go here. I just want to commend the finance staff and city management. I mean, it's, it's obvious, uh, how well the job everybody does. Uh, you see ratings like this on par with the federal government. So compliments again to you guys for, for how we manage all of this. And, uh, thank you for, for the job you do every day.

John and Bob, thank you for your partnership all these years. We appreciate it. And I commend, I'm going to say, I agree with max. Um, we've got an outstanding CFO and I watch her and Erica as they got in that room and, uh, and provided all the information and our community would be very proud of, uh, who leads our finance team and the way they present that to these people who are not impressed with us. They're here to take measure of who we are. Uh, they're not smiling. Uh, they're not friendly. It's a job, a serious job to them. And the way this was presented was very professional and very thoroughly done, and we're fortunate to have you all in our community. Okay, let's move ahead to resolutions.

We need a roll call vote, please.

We need a roll call vote, don't we? Absolutely. All right, we've got a motion and a second. All right, Lindsey.

Dawson?

Yes, ma'am.

Griswold?

Yes, ma'am.

Mormon?

Yes, ma'am.

Parsons? Yes. Taylor? Yes. Yes. Whitten? Yes. Adams? Yes. Koblentz?

Yes, ma'am. Anders? Yes. Now let's move to resolutions. Sorry about that. All right.

Under resolutions, item 10A1 concurs with the actions of the Industrial Development Board to sell approximately 94.82 acres of property located on Evans Court to the Auburn City Board of Education in the amount of $2,844,300 for the purpose of building a new bus facility and other maintenance facilities. Move for approval. Second. Second.

I have a motion, second. Comments, questions? All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? And the motion carries.

Item 10A2 concurs with the actions of the Industrial Development Board to purchase approximately one-half acre of property located at 1715 Pumphrey Avenue, currently owned by the Auburn City Board of Education in the amount of $50,000. The property will be used to expand the Vinkelman facility adjacent to the property.

Move approval.

Second. The motion is second. Any comments or questions? All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? And the motion carries.

Item 10B1 authorizes a tax abatement for NX Battery Solutions Corp. located at 2585 Innovation Drive for building modifications and the acquisition of new machinery and equipment. The company anticipates hiring 30 new employees over the next three years and investing approximately $2.9 million. Move for approval.

Second. Motion second. Comments or questions? All right. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? And the motion carries.

Item 10B2 authorizes a tax abatement for Sohon Auto USA Corporation to be located at 3100 Haygood Court for the acquisition of property, construction of a building, and the acquisition of new machinery and equipment. The company anticipates hiring 92 new employees over the next three years and investing approximately $63.9 million.

Move for approval. Second. All right. We have a motion, second. Comments, questions? All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? And the motion carries.

The next two items are Information Technology Director slash Chief Information Officer would love to answer all your detailed questions about these important information technology items. I got a few questions from some of you about them, so I told Greg to please speak, City Council. if you have questions. Item 10C1 authorizes a five-year contract with Davenport Group Incorporated for a Dell PowerScale Apex subscription in the total amount of $781,110.86 or $168,351.36 per year. This will represent a savings of $781,000 over the five-year period versus our current solution. Move for approval.

Second. The motion is second. Who might have questions? Comments?

I think we ought to brag on him. It looks like he's getting it for about half price, and we're getting newer stuff.

I appreciate that, Sonny.

And I would guess that... The licenses are paid and everything. I wonder if he could speak to this. He'd probably do a better job.

Well, he'd like to speak to it. One of the things I think that you've heard earlier is we talk a lot about being good stewards of the taxpayer dollar, and this is one of those things. We could continue down the path. We're going down and keep buying equipment instead of leasing it, and the goal here with leasing it, even though the finance director that everybody just spoke so nicely of would like to have words with Greg about the challenging parts – Doing the leases behind the scenes is more challenging for us, um, from a paperwork standpoint, but certainly savings is kind of saving this kind of money, which we save a lot more on the next agenda item. But Greg may have a few words.

It's important for us to get in right now because, you know, with everything AI these days, everything is costing more in the it world. Um, you know, lead times are longer. And so right now we're able to get in when prices are still, they're not great, but they're better than what they will be. This is just that opportunity to get in on that and fix that cost for the next five years in this instance.

And by leasing it, we can keep up with the changes in technology without having to repurchase equipment.

So that makes things a lot easier from that perspective, too. So, yeah, we're able to stay in support. We're able to stay a little more cutting edge. It's been a little while in both of these solutions that we have tonight that we have refreshed everything, and so we'll pick up some immediate gains just from doing that.

Thank you.

At the end of the lease, what happens at the end of the lease? Yes, we have kind of two different ones. The one that we're currently on with the still APEX subscription, so this is a five-year. At the end of that, we would probably be looking to renegotiate another term. At that point, you're probably looking at, again, another hardware refresh. So we'll have some options there. We'll have plenty of time to prepare for that as well.

As far as the data is concerned, is the hardware all inside in Auburn?

Yes, it does. And so this is kind of part of a redundant solution, this one specifically, where this one represents our production storage environment. We also have a disaster recovery archive site as well, and so we always keep those things, I guess, replicated in concert just to make sure that we do have options in the event that something does happen.

Okay. So in five years, if we have to switch to another provider, the data's all portable over to another server.

Greg, do you have the microphone close to you? Some folks are having a hard time hearing. Sure.

There you go. So both of these solutions tonight, what's so good about them and makes it easier for us, they essentially plug and play into the current. So an example, when this contract is approved, These nodes essentially plug into what we have today. Data just kind of shifts down to those new nodes, and then we don't see as far as a missing beat of downtime. And so that's between both of these that are on here tonight. That's one of the beautiful things. We don't have to worry about significant migration times, things like that. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you for the questions. Greg loves them.

Yes. Any other questions? All right. We have a motion to second. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right. Motion carries.

Item 10C2 authorizes a three-year contract with Davenport Group for a Dell VX rail virtualization infrastructure in the amount of $2,510,872.92, which represents a three-year savings versus our current solution of $1.17 million.

Two for approval. We've got a motion and a second. Any comments or questions?

These are budgeted items, correct?

So there's a nuance. Uh, the item 10 C one is budgeted in 26. We're asking for an adjustment in 27 and then it will be budgeted thereafter. Um, the Tennessee to Greg, I don't have it open in front of me.

So we are budgeted for FY 27 and yet for 28 and 29, it'll pick up in the budget.

Thank you.

This is a Dell VX rail virtualization infrastructure. So. Could you break that down?

Sonny, you sounded so IT with that. That was really good.

So this, I guess, the easy way to describe this so traditionally before i can see when i started with i t you know a server represented a physical box that you ran things on they kind of progressed and so now what that looks like is you have like they still can't hear you council members are struggling these uh buckets of kind of processor hard disk ram some of those things you would have in your normal computer at home and so these present those out to all of our virtual servers so we have about 85 servers that run on this platform today and those again can move between nodes, move between sites. We don't have any downtime when we have to do any kind of maintenance. They also participate well in our backup and recovery plan, so we can actually back these up to cloud and restore them out. So if something wiped out our entire infrastructure here, we still can survive that. So a lot of attractive things there.

And mind you, even the rating agencies are big on cybersecurity.

Indeed.

And ask a lot of questions about it for that very reason.

Any other questions? All right. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right. Motion carries.

Mayor, those are all the items of business we have for you this evening.

Okay. At this time, we'll open Citizens Open Forum. If you'd like to address City Council about anything, please come forward and give us your name and address for the record, and you'll have three minutes to speak to the council. We ask that your comments be addressed to the council.

Robert McCollum. 4315 Golf Club Drive. I also own the website Alabama Real News. I'm here to address not the reason why I was thrown off the ballot, but the technicality and I believe the precedent that we are setting due to that. Let's see. Just one second. America was built on the simple idea in this country the people choose their leaders. Government does not choose its opponents. Those in power don't decide who is worthy of asking for the people's vote. The citizens do. That's not the promise of self-governance. I stepped forward because I love Auburn. That's the reason why I moved here. I believe our community deserved another voice on the ballot. Whether I won or lost, should have been decided by the voters, not by a process that, from my perspective, denied me a fair opportunity to be on the ballot. I was informed after qualifying had closed that I was considered ineligible because I was not registered to vote. By then, there was no opportunity to address the issue before the deadline had passed. That left me asking a simple question. Is this the best we can do? Are we that scared of competition that this is the best we can do? There was another moment that gave me a pause shortly after I qualified. I received a phone call from the sheriff of Tallapoosa County. Jimmy Abbott had spoken with Councilman Tommy Dawson and the sheriff recommended that I would draw from the race. I will let others decide what they think of that. I only know how it felt to me as though entering public service required permission from people already connected to power. That isn't how a constitutional republic is supposed to work. Healthy governments don't fear competition. Honest leaders don't fear debate. Strong democracies don't become stronger by reducing the number of choices before the voters. Too often today, we talk about preserving democracy while making it harder for ordinary citizens to participate in it. We celebrate government by the people, but sometimes we forget the people part. Government is not supposed to belong to the incumbents. It's not supposed to belong to the insiders. It belongs to every citizen willing to raise their hand and serve. So tonight, I'm asking this council to think beyond me. Ask yourself whether this process inspires confidence. Ask whether it encourages ordinary citizens to get involved. Ask whether a young person watching tonight would leave believing that Auburn welcomes new voices or protects the status quo. Public trust is built when government...

Thank you, sir. Who will be next?

I'm Mark Haberstroh, I live at 528 Oak Meadow Lane. I'm not sure if this is the appropriate place, but I live right next to the Montessori School, it's called Children's House, it's at 231 East Drake Avenue. My son's going to be attending there tomorrow, and I've been living there now for three years. I'm born and raised in Auburn. I've traveled a bunch, but I came back here to raise my son, and I know how much this city cares about its citizens and especially its children. But there's not appropriate signage for that school, and there's been a lot of new houses and new development for mostly students who are coming in, and this school doesn't look like a traditional school. So people... are just driving way too fast on that road. And I wanted to make a request for speed bumps and more appropriate signage just out there in front of the school. And I talked to the owner of the school, Charlene Cam. She's donated for a sidewalk to be put in. I don't know if that's happened on the other side of the street away from Jan Dempsey. Yeah, sorry, I'm nervous. I don't like public speaking whatsoever. You're doing a good job. I appreciate it. Yeah, but I see a lot of students driving way too fast, looking at their cell phones, and anything we could do to bring more awareness and safety to that school would be awesome.

Sure. Thank you. Thank you for making us aware. We appreciate it.

Is this in the appropriate place, or is there somebody else?

It is fine. I mean, normally you could have called somebody from public safety if you wanted to. You could have contacted your city council rep if you wanted to. You could have called. the mayor's office, or the city manager's office. But we have heard you tonight, and our staff will be following up. Thank you very much. How about that?

We'll have a staff member get with you if you don't mind staying a few minutes. Somebody will get your contact information. We can do that too. We'll be in direct contact with you. I'm going to have to head out in a few minutes. Yeah, so I'll get Allison, our director of communications. She's right in the back row. She'll follow and get your information.

Thank you so much.

As the mayor said, you feel free to call any city department anytime. We'll be glad to help you.

Hope you have a great first day. Thank you. Who will be next?

I'm Francis Peron, 1270 East University Drive. Good evening, Mr. Mayor, ladies and gentlemen. I have come to share concerns about the Islamic Center and its construction permit application. This is not about Islam. Rather, based on discussions with residents in Auburn, including in the direct areas surrounding the site of the mosque, there are substantial concerns about the impact of the project. Shock and disappointment are clear, no communication with the people. The final decision rests with you, elected officials, to thoroughly and properly review the application and make the citizens of Auburn aware of the application. City Council members have stated that the Islamic Center is just a religious building and its permit must be swiftly approved. Why not make the effort to investigate the impact on the community of the mosque? A call to the city planning department has produced fuzzy answers stating the three weeks taken for permit to be approved, no reference to research on how the decision has been taken elsewhere, yet there is an abundance of literature on the topic considering its peculiarity. Why is it so? On his GoFundMe site, the Muslim community declared that, I quote, the new building is designed with an accommodation for 400 people, significantly expanding the community's capacity for its current 120-person Armstrong Street facility. Yet the Muslim community is reported to be between 700 and 1,000 people. Such a discrepancy demands explanation. For example, the two-lane road on Mill Creek Road cannot accommodate the traffic of a community described as vibrant on its 700-member website. With an average of three persons per car, about 250 cars will be on the road for the 60-minute Friday prayers, as well as for some of the five daily prayers. There is no space for a turning lane into the center's parking lot, already too small to accommodate the minimum 330 vehicles on normal Fridays, and more so on festive days. The planned parking is for 150 cars. Typically, a seven square foot allowance per person is standard. The self-reported vibrancy of the community of 700 to 1,000 members will need five to 7,000 square feet for its mosque. The planned size is less than 3,000 square feet. Noise has been nationwide reported as a significant issue by neighboring residents of mosques, and not only during the months-long Ramadan, when activities last late into the night. Add noise from 330 cars and 700 to 1,000 congregants talking, dancing, chanting, etc., way beyond the Alabama State Code Section 13A-11-7. have the local residents who need to go to work, to school and live their lives being consulted? Why not? Questions about the educational program, the schedule and number of community events, the on-site cemetery and the architecture issue demand answers. In conclusion, please provide the Auburn community with notice of the application, the schedule to approve this project. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, sir. Who will be next?

Okay. We'll close citizens open forum. Anything from the council? Okay. So move to adjourn.