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NHA Contributions: Leading up to the financing process, NHA worked with public works and finance staff to prepare a “common story” with consistency through all the public information on the utility. Community activists had noted in the past that the rating reports, 218 cost of service studies, and bond disclosure documents had some inconsistencies. NHA worked with all the members of the wastewater utility team to prepare a “common story” that would be consistent through all current and future public documents on the utility. This common story also addressed the issue of a future DPR mandate by showing a long-term rate management strategy that could potentially deliver funding for DPR. NHA also played a lead role in preparing the credit rating presentation which helped garner a rating upgrade from S&P.
Project Completion: November 2018
NHA Contact: Mark Northcross, Eric Scriven and Mike Meyer
Unique Characteristics of Project: Creative structuring helped the City to achieve over $13 million of upfront savings, critical to the City’s short- and long-term rate management strategy. The City was upgraded to a “AA-” by S&P.
Executive Summary: The City of Riverside operates a wastewater treatment plant that has already been partially reconfigured in anticipation of future DPR mandates from the State’s Water Boards. NHA served the City as municipal advisor on a $150 million+ refunding of existing debt in 2018. We assisted the City in successfully getting the utility’s credit rating upgraded from A+ to AA- by Standard & Poor’s and developed a restructuring that helped generate near term savings to help the City meet its debt service coverage thresholds without having to increase rates on residents.
The refunding produced $18.9 million of present value savings, or 10% of the refunded par. Over half of the savings was taken in the first 5 years in order reduce the amount of sewer rate increases that would be needed to meet minimum coverage requirements.