I’ve been trying to figure out some things about the bonds for the baseball stadium.
City council has to approve many of the actions but the real show is at the Downtown Development Corporation (DDC) (council in sheep’s clothing).
The DDC had meetings on January 8, May 28, June 18, and August 1 of 2013. Minutes are available for the January and May meetings. Those minutes are not searchable like the ones for city council meetings. That makes learning what is going on much more difficult.
The June and August minutes are not available on the city web site. As a point of comparison, the minutes for the city council meeting of August 13 are available and are searchable.
Convenient
It seems that making things inconvenient for the public turns out to be convenient for the cabal.
I have been able to see that in the May meeting the bond underwriters were to be Morgan Stanley and Citigroup. According to El Paso Inc. the bond underwriter that acctually issued the bonds was Goldman Sachs.
I wonder who broke off the relationship with Morgan Stanley and why.
Growing interest
The August agenda of the DDC contemplates issuing the bonds at rates not to exceed 6.25% for the non-taxable bonds and 7.0% for the taxable bonds. The interest rates were referred to as “true interest rates”.
The El Paso Inc. article indicated that the tax-exempt bonds were sold at 6.5%. The taxable bonds were not successfully sold to the public (no one wanted them) but were sold to Goldman Sachs for 7.25%.
Either the interest rates were raised in the August meeting (the minutes would show this) or the term “true interest rates” means something like “let us give you a number, but the real number is something else”.
We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak 
They were probably referring to “real interest rate” which is the nominal rate of interest minus inflation. In the case of a loan, it is this real interest that the lender receives as income. Like everything else with the folks involved, they probably didn’t even know what they were saying. They were trying to use a buzz word and got it wrong. But I guess you would have to ask them. Good luck with that.
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