City Council - Special Meeting

Alrighty. Welcome, everybody. We are having this special meeting this evening. Tawny is not here yet, but all the other council members are. So I'm going to go ahead and call the Moab City Council special meeting on Tuesday, September 8th at 5.30 PM. The purpose of this meeting is to have a public meeting to solicit comments for the Utah Division of Water Resources funding for the water tank project out in Spanish Valley. And Val is here to answer any questions you might have. You know we all went to the Division of Water Resources and asked for some funding to get the water tank going. So the city of Moab applied to the Utah Division of Water Resources for a loan to be used to construct a 1.5 million gallon water storage tank on city-owned property located in Spanish Valley. The Grand County Planning Commission held a public hearing and recommended approval to the Grand County Commission on August 3. And the Grand County Commission held a public hearing and approved the project on August 4, 2026. On August 20, Moab City presented the funding request for the project to the Utah Division of Water Resources. At that meeting, the board voted to move the project forward. It is a policy of the Utah Board of Water Resources to provide a 15-day period for public comment prior to the purchase of any non-voted revenue bonds. Security for the loan would be provided through the sale of non-voted revenue bonds. The bonds will be issued for a total amount of $3 million. That amount will be repaid to the Division of Water Resources over a period of 15 years at a 3.72% interest rate. Payments shall be made from the water enterprise funds, which include the net revenues of the city's water system. And the city is in the process of updating this water master plan and will assess rate structures in the coming year. So with this regard, the board wishes to solicit the comments of the water users either for or against the project. Is there anybody here that would like to speak to or make a public statement on this project? Seeing none, if you're interested in making a comment, we encourage you to respond in writing before September 23, 2026. All written comments received prior to that date will be reviewed by the Board of Water Resources prior to the final decision on whether to proceed with the bond purchase. Comments should be addressed either the City of Moab at 217 East Center Street, Moab, Utah, 84532. You can email Val. Val, I can't say your name. A-V-E-I-L-L-I-E-U-X at MoabCity.gov or to the Utah Division of Water Resources P.O. Box 146201 Salt Lake City 84114-6201 or you can email Ethan Stainer at E-S-T-A-Y-N-E-R at Utah.gov at Utah.gov. Any questions, comments from the Council? Thank you for your work. Anything, Val, you want to add?

No, I think you covered it. Yeah, we just encourage everyone to submit comment. And yeah, we've been working on that this since the spring. We're excited to see it to come to fruition. And this is just a step that we're both required and excited to offer to the public to give comment on this process.

Right and there were public comments there were no public comments that the planning Commission meeting or the grand County Commission meeting at their. Consideration for this project.

Yeah, I think this project has been around for a minute and folks have had opportunity to provide input on it. But here we are again for the next two weeks. If you have any comments or concerns, please feel free to reach out.

All right. Thanks, Bill. So this will be the next step as we start going through the bonding process with Borden.

Yeah. So we're working with Alex from Zions, and they're providing bond counsel as well. So we'll be working with them going through the process. Alex Buxton from Zions is well-versed in this kind of stuff and has been our advisor for a while and has worked on a lot of these with DWR. So we're in good hands. But that will be the next step.

Well, I think the next step is for the Water Resource Division to actually approve. Yeah, once we're approved, it's the next step. So this is just a process. You know, we did this for CDBG, you know, when there's grants that we're funding that we're getting from other government entities. This is just part of the process. So this is probably the last step for you guys, other than approving the bonds when they come to us. Yeah.

correct yeah um we just have a kind of a we kind of have a laundry list that they give us to do this one of the things um and yeah we've got that initial meeting between alex buxton zines bank and their bond uh folks and then gilmore is our bond council we're all meeting in about a week or two so it's on its way moving so

Any value, I mean, this is probably more of a core question of when, once we get this all taken care of, when we would start construction on that project?

We're shooting for spring. Michael, I don't know if you remember the exact timeline that we're looking at.

Yeah, so we're looking at spring for finishing everything up as far as the project goes, all of the designs, get it out to bid, get everything done to the point where we can be awarding the bid sometime in the spring. We still have some work to do. The project isn't 100% designed yet, so we have our consultants working on the design. finishing the design. And then construction starting, we're looking at late spring, early summer, and then just going as quickly as we can to finish the construction, hopefully by the end of 27. But certainly spending the grant money first and moving that along through the process so that we don't lose that money, which we have until December of 27.

Right, and the grant money is the money we got from the Governor's Office of Economic Development. $1.8 million for this specific project. Gosh, I think it was four years ago.

Yeah, we've had to extend it. So I'm sure they'd extend it again if we asked, because we are doing this project, but we don't want to ask. We want to just get this project going.

And we've also asked our federal delegation for an earmark for this project.

So we'll hear about that pretty soon as well.

All right, that's it. I'm going to anything else. All right, I will adjourn this special meeting and we will read.