The Resource January 2014 Volume 1 Issue 001 | Page 5

honor + pride + tradition + respect
Fighting Scouts Event Center
Continued from page 4
sporting arenas throughout the country. In addition, our team selected the
return of Architects Green & Green
as the District’s Architects for the
Bee Holdzil (Stronghold) Fighting
Scouts Events Center and for other
construction projects still in progress
at that time and to redevelop and began re-implementing a new District
facility master plan that is essential to
the safety and upkeep of all our facilities throughout the district. The general contractors selected for the Bee
Holdzil (Stronghold) Fighting Scouts
Events Center project was FCI Constructors, Inc. as well.

Using the Impact Aid bonding possibility Window Rock Unified
School District’s elected officials went
to the voters in 2008 requesting to use

As the design phase of the
project ended and the actual construction began with the groundbreaking on
August 09, 2011, our next challenge
was that prior to issuance of capital
project bonds our school district had
to receive a bond rating by a rating
agency such as Standard and Poor’s
and Moody. To receive a rating that
would insure a lower interest rate our
district had to present our case to the
rating agencies and show the following: (A) The source of funds to pay
the bond is stable (money will be there
annually to pay the bond); and (B) The
district had to determine the amount of
Impact Aid dollars that can be set-aside each year while at the same time
allow sufficient dollars for our general
operating expenses. In order to insure
the rating agencies had confidence in
both the funding source (Impact Aid)
and the district's ability to budget both

bonding authority to build the Bee
Holdzil (Stronghold) Fighting Scouts
Events Center at a very respectable
and competitive interest rate. It was
a collective effort from which Window Rock Unified School District was
able to receive a credit rating of an A+
from the Standard and Poor’s Credit
Rating Agency. Furthermore, through
the knowledge and efforts of our team,
we were able to take advantage of the
Qualified School Construction Bond
(QSCB) program under the American
Recovery and Reinvestment Act of
2009 (Recovery Act), which resulted
in our ability to have an interest rate
as low as 1.05%. The QSCB Bond allowed our District's borrowing cost to
be significantly lower as compared to
issuing traditional Tax-Exempt Bonds.
The low 1.05% interest rate resulted in
the District paying only approximately $830,000 in interest over the life of

bonds in the market place to various
investors around the country but because Federal Impact Aid is not well
known to investors around the country, the District had to help educate
potential investors on the federal revenues that secure the bonds. Our team
looked at all alternatives and had several thorough Governing Board meetings to discuss the pro's and con's of
each alternatives, including risk factors, the tax laws and requirements,
the federal law requirements, the state
law requirements and the impact on
budget, including all previous auditors
reports. The bonds were well received
by Investors in the marketplace with
the bond sales held in November 2011.

Things were looking pretty positive and the construction was
completely underway when two major financial challenges not foreseeable even through all the studies done,

Impact Aid funds to finance capital
projects by using Impact Aid dollars as
revenue bonds subject to the same requirements as revenue bonds financed
by local tax dollars. It is important to
realize that many federally connected
school districts especially those on
Indian lands have little if any taxable
land meaning they have limited (if
any) assessed value on which to levy
a tax to finance a capital project. To
even consider construction of a project of this magnitude would require
using the Impact Aid bond program.
Approval to use Impact Aid bonds for
the Bee Holdzil (Stronghold) Fighting Scouts Events Center was passed
by an overwhelmingly 93.92% of the
voters in our community and thus the
process of planning and implementing
the thoughts, the dream and the plans;
or watering the seeds continued.

for the required annual payment and
our operating budget, a face to face
to meeting with presentations was the
best way to gain the trust of the rating
agencies. This required a collective
partnership of all the parties involved;
the school district; the group putting
together the bond presentation (Stone
& Youngberg) and the party that can
vouch for the stability of the funding
source, Impact Aid. For Window Rock
Unified School District, all the parties
(Our Window Rock Unified School
District Administration and Governing Board representatives; Stone and
Youngberg; and the National Association of Federally Impacted Schools Executive Director, John Forkenbrock)
traveled together to New York City in
October of 2011 to make our presentations before the rating agencies. Working together we secured the needed

the bond transaction. With this plan,
our team and the Governing Board decided to use a combination of Impact
Aid bonds totaling $20,350,000 with
the remaining amount to be paid from
the District’s cash reserved saved specifically for this project amounting to
a total of approximately $37.0 million
dollars to construct the now known facility, Bee Holdzil (Stronghold) Fighting Scouts Events Center.

We as a team went through
the process of issuing bonds for the
D