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Show Where Will Money Come From For RDA Loan By GARY R. BLODGETT BOUNTIFUL Where is Bountiful getting its money to loan "up to $350,000.' to the city's Redevelopment Agency? THIS QUESTION was asked by Halley Thomas of the Bountiful City Council last Wednesday night, who questioned ques-tioned why the city was proposing prop-osing increased garbage, sewer sew-er and power rates if it has an excess of money. Mayor Dean S. Stahle responded re-sponded by saying that an attempt is made to have each department "stand alone, pay its own way." HE SAID money will be needed in a few years to purchase purch-ase new garbage trucks and a television camera truck is needed now to scan the city's sewer lines for potential problems prob-lems as well as broken or plugged plug-ged lines. "Power rates have not been increased in three years, yet costs to the city to purchase blocks of power have increased in-creased substantially," the mayor said. "THIS IS why we are proposing prop-osing increases in water, sewer and power rates, but no increase in-crease in property taxes. Then the mayor added: "In response to why the city " is using city funds to loan money to the RDA, it's be cause we have a surplus of funds in certain departments which will allow loaning of this money, on a month to month basis, without hampering the operation of the city." MAYOR STAHLE emphasized empha-sized that money will be loaned to the RDA at the same interest rate that is being received re-ceived on funds invested by the city. City Manager Tom Hardy noted that Bountiful has approximately S8 million in reserves, re-serves, money that is invested and gaining interest. "We are fortunate that we do not have to purchase tax anticipation notes to carry the city through each fiscal year," he said. MR. HARDY noted that the city has about $3.5 million invested in-vested for future pow er purchases; purch-ases; about $500,000 in water resource funds paid by developers de-velopers but not yet spent; $500,000 in general fund reserve; re-serve; and a six-months carryover car-ryover in the city's capital improvements im-provements fund. "I want to emphasize that the RDA will repay its debt within five years and that the interest will be repaid yearly so that the city will not be losing a dime by loaning the money to the RDA," said the city manager. man-ager. HE SAID the RDA operating fund is presently $44,000 in debt. |