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Part – Newstatenabenn

Committee discusses funding options for new Lexington City Hall
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Committee discusses funding options for new Lexington City Hall

LEXINGTON, Ky. (WKYT) – Talks about a new city hall for Lexington Fayette-Urban County government continued Tuesday.

The current building was built more than 100 years ago, in 1920.

When it comes to financing a new town hall, one big takeaway is that cash is key.

“It can really be a tool to help with any type of financing you do. Think of it like a mortgage. The more cash you deposit, the lower your payments will be,” said LFUCG Chief Revenue Officer Wesley Holbrook.

However, there are other options, including a public-private partnership, an approach that was struck down by the council in April, and historic tax credits at the state and federal level. Bonds are another method, giving preference to shorter-term bonds with lower interest rates.

“If you have larger bond issues, that can affect the ability to borrow for other projects in the future,” Holbrook said. “We talked about that a lot during budget time when we talked about doing a bond package.”

After the initial presentation, council members had the opportunity to ask their questions, and many focused on crunching the numbers for each of the options.

“One of the questions that we seemed to have struggled to answer, in the way that I think if you and I were buying a house, would be how much could we pay per month?” said Lexington Vice Mayor Dan Wu.

Part of that response included seeing how much of the unallocated funds the local government would be willing to designate.

“You can see how much of that you would be willing to pay for a bonus, a p3 financial partner, whatever to generate cash flow for that payment,” Holbrook said.

The final decision will be made later, after more discussion has been made and more questions have been answered.

“We’ve had conversations, but I think there are still a lot of questions that can be answered and give us clarity as we try to move forward with the discussion at City Hall,” said Councilman Jason Brown.