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Volatile Financial Markets Put A Wrinkle In Bonding For New Arnolds Park City Complex

April 23, 2025 Steve Schwaller

(Arnolds Park)– Volatility and uncertainty surrounding the financial markets right now is having an impact on funding for a new city complex in Arnolds Park. Meeting in special session Tuesday evening, the City Council was scheduled to approve the sale of not to exceed $15 million in revenue bonds for the project. But Tim Oswald of Piper Sandler, the city’s financial consultant, told the council they were not able to sell the full $15 million in bonds Tuesday. Oswald says instead, they were only able to sell $9.995 million…

“It was kind of unusual day in the markets with the commentary from elected officials nationally and a lot of supply and not a ton of demand. Interest rates are where they are which is reasonably attractive overall but you still have a lot of buyers entering the market at these rate levels, a lot of folks sitting on the sidelines waiting to see if rates get higher later. And so that’s driving decisions made today with this sale.”

Oswald says with the $9.995 million, the city will have sufficient funds to get the project through the first year of construction. Oswald says they’ll attempt to sell the remaining $5 million in bonds later, in hopes the market conditions improve…

“We’ll follow up with the rest as we watch where market rates go and also how fast the city spends money. We’ll try and time both of those as we can.”

Oswald says there is a bit of a risk in doing that, however…

“We don’t know where rates will be tomorrow or next month and so if rates were to be higher there is that risk. I’m not sure I consider it that great a risk in terms of we didn’t have the bonds sold today, so it’s kind of hard to say we’re comparing a future sale to today when not all the issue was sold.”

The City Council Tuesday approved the sale of the $9.995 million in bonds for now, and opted to try to sell the remaining amount later.

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