7 News Belize

Will City Hall Roll Over Municipal Bond?
posted (October 2, 2015)
Is the Belize City Council considering rolling over a portion of the Municipal Bond? Mayor Darrell Bradley was the first mayor to ever float a bond, which allowed the City to raise 20 million dollars in funds, used to pave over 100 streets.

Last year, the first tranche of the bond matured, where the City repaid bond holders 1.5 million dollars. They had the opportunity to roll over that money, instead of paying it back, which is something they did not do. The media got a tip that the City might be thinking about doing that with a second tranche, and so today, was asked the Mayor about it:

Mike Rudon, Ch5
"The City Council is interested in floating another municipal bond. Could you confirm or deny that for us?"

Darrell Bradley - Mayor, Belize City Council
"Well we are not interested in floating another municipal bond. I had indicated you in relation to the structure of the bond program that was launched two year ago, is that it's a revolving fund. What this city council does and this is common for all municipalities that do bonds particularly the municipalities that we look at in terms of samples and models in south Florida, in parts of the United States, in Canada and in other places that they do this. As long as the municipality meets the debt service requirement, it serves as a revolving amount of money that allows the municipality to do capital projects. For example, the reason why the bond program was schedule 2, 5 and 10 years in terms of the maturity date was at those intervals, when the repayment is made, the bond holders can roll over the bond and the municipalities at those intervals can do capital projects. So that what you are doing is that you are finding a way to creatively fund capital projects in circumstances where municipality may not have the bulk of the fund. We were able to retire a substantial portion of the bond 1.5 million dollars. I think that matured on December 24 of last year. We never roll over at that point even though that we could have done so. One of the things and in relation to the roll over period when those bonds matured, the City Council didn't go to the investors. The investors actually came to the City Council, because I don't know if you are aware, but liquidity is very high in our markets and banks are offering zero interest. Investors are looking for an opportunity to invest funds. It's built into the structure that we would have refloated segments of the municipal bond at the intervals when they became due, but we never did that and we have not done that."

Mike Rudon, Ch5
"I know that elections are a month away. You may or may not be back in office depending on the results of those elections. Floating that bond. Is that something that any council will look at after elections?"

Darrell Bradley - Mayor, Belize City Council
"Well it's advised that one would do that. Because again, there are so many needs within the municipality. I think that the infrastructure work has been very successful and I think that this is something that one ought to continue the concreting of roads. At the present moment we are at 145 concreted roads."

Home | Archives | Downloads/Podcasts | Advertise | Contact Us

7 News Belize