During Monday's discussion meeting there were a few topics that generated the most discussion.
First, we asked for and received an opportunity to extend the bond underwriter contract with Merrill Lynch/Bank of America. This is significant since Merrill had been recently taken under by Bank of America and there was some question as to what would happen with our agreement. The contract doesn't guarantee anything except that we will be able to use Merrill/Bank of America to do the underwriting of our bonds. Interest rates, demand for said bonds, etc, all will be dictated by the bond market and not by this agreement. The agreement, pending the vote next week, will be extended by two years.
Secondly, I had asked to put our 2009 meeting schedule on the discussion agenda. Last year during our reorganization meeting there were a few residents that expressed concern about the fact that the District and the Municipality have overlapping meeting dates. We meet on the 2nd and 3rd Monday of each month while the Commissioners meet on the 2nd and 4th Monday of each month. Residents do not have the opportunity to attend the discussion meetings of both the Commission and the Board. I would not have a problem moving to the 1st and 3rd Monday's of each month to clear up this scheduling conflict. However, if we do move to the 1st Monday then we will not have all financial information available for discussion during our meeting. That presents an issue that could possibly be resolved by having the financial information available to us as soon as possible and then discussing and voting on it at our voting meeting. That is not perfect, but could be an option. Moving the meeting to a Tuesday night, while doable, may not be practical either. Superintendent Allison will be researching the impact of moving the meetings to a different night of the week and should present this information to the Board in coming weeks.
I had thought about trying to change the time of our meeting to 6pm instead of 7:30pm. I just don't know if that is too close to the end of the workday for enough people to attend.
Any thoughts or ideas regarding scheduling would be appreciated.
Thanks for reading.
James
