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6.2.C. - Page 2 refunding) we believe refunding these bonds and reducing the special taxes of the property owners in the district supports with the City Council's policy goal (Economic Development) of making Redwood City an attractive place for businesses. Selection of Financing Professionals Staff recommends that the City move forward with this refunding and that the City Manager be authorized to engage the services of the following professionals to serve as the financing team: Jeff Stava, Nossaman Guthner— bond counsel Paul Thimmig, Quint and Thimmig — disclosure counsel Bill Euphrat, William Euphrat Municipal Finance —financial advisor A request for proposal was sent to three bond underwriting (investment banking) firms — De La Rosa & Co., Piper Jaffray, and Stone & Youngberg. The three firms contacted are the top three underwriters of land-secured bond issues in California, and each is qualified to underwrite the proposed bond issue. The underwriter's primary responsibility is to price and purchase the bonds on the day of the sale. Although each underwriter proposed a fee for its services, it is not best to use this as the sole selection criterion. The City's goal is to select the underwriter that will be able to sell the bonds at the lowest possible interest expense. After reviewing the proposals with Bill Euphrat, staff recommends the selection of De La Rosa & Co. as the underwriter for this bond sale. Although the other two proposers are very good firms that could sell these bonds, and which have sold land secured bonds for the City, staff believes it is helpful to maintain a climate of competition for the City's business among underwriters to help ensure that our bonds are being sold at the lowest possible interest rate. It is common practice for public agencies in the market frequently to rotate their underwriting business in this fashion. De La Rosa submitted a responsive proposal that contained good suggestions on how to structure these bonds. The proposal included yield comparisons of comparable land secured transactions showing that, at least for certain transactions, De La Rosa is able to price bonds with lower yields than its competitors. Given the high credit quality of the Redwood Shores CFD, we believe that there will be no shortage of interested buyers and that De La Rosa will be able to price the bonds aggressively. De La Rosa has proposed a fee of $6.293 per bond (per $1,000) which is lower than that proposed by Stone & Youngberg ($9.898 per bond) and slightly higher than Piper Jaffray ($6.10 per bond). Since 1999 the City has sold eleven bond issues using the services of Nossaman LLC as bond counsel (Jeff Stava) and thirteen bond issues using the services of William Euphrat Municipal Finance, Inc. as financial advisor (Bill Euphrat). Quint & Thimmig