Title
Amended Interlocal Agreement - First Florida Governmental Financing Commission (B)
This item involves a proposal to adopt a resolution amending the existing interlocal agreement among the members of the First Florida Governmental Financing Commission.
Explanation
The City of Gainesville has been a member of the First Florida Governmental Financing Commission (FFGFC) since 1987. The Commission is an independent public body formed in 1985 by an Interlocal Agreement between several Florida cities and counties with high investment grade ratings who desired to reduce the cost of borrowing by creating their own, captive pool financing program. Since then, the Commission has provided the City many opportunities to borrow money jointly with other governmental bodies which have similar, high credit ratings and save money by spreading the costs of issuing debt across all the borrowers. Each Member is responsible only for that portion of the proceeds of each series of bonds issued by the Commission which the Member in turn borrows from the Commission for the Member's own use. There is no cross-collateralization of Member loans.
The current Members of the Commission are the Cities of Boca Raton, Gainesville, Hollywood, St. Petersburg, Sarasota and Broward County, Florida. The Commission is governed by a board of Representatives, one appointed by each Member. Finance Director Mark Benton currently serves as the Representative of the City.
For several years, the Commission has discussed expanding the number of borrowers to include cities and counties who are not Members in order to share the benefits of the program with other local governments and expand the size of borrowings to enhance the economies of scale which led to the formation of the Commission in the first place. At a long range planning retreat held in the spring of 2006, the Commission unanimously decided to attempt to modernize its Interlocal Agreement to permit loans to be made to non-...
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