Sam, it would be nice if you had explained in your voting speech that the funding for housing, parks, and transportation came from an increase in public dollars beyond the current $288M TIF maximum for NM.

But most importantly, the $38M increase is accomplished by issueing a second tax payers credit card-borrowing the money from the taxpayers GENERAL FUND. The city will have to borrow money on the open financial market and/or take money from other general fund requirements like police, fire, parks, street maintenance, etc.

This extra borrowing beyond the TIF is because North Macadam URD cannot generate enough tax dollars to pay for this Amendment 8 give-away (besides being $127M underfunded for all the other identified NM projects).

Secondly, as explained at the URAC meeting calling this a "fixed contract" is not exactly what the industry calls a "fixed contract". If there are "design changes" requested by the city then the cost can go up. The amendment 8 doesn't specify in good legal terms what constitutes
"design changes" and how and who determines if the "design changes" are caused/created by the city. In any project of this magnitude and complexity there will be "changes". Who's the arbritrator?

Plus, you have not mentioned all the prior "design changes" that have bare-boned the tram project to terminals without weather protection roofs, bathrooms, waiting areas, landscaping, etc.(value engineering). Now when these are maybe added back into the project, will these be counted as "design changes" and the public pays, but you can claim "we kept the price at $57.5M?