Two Denver investment banks, RBC Dain Rauscher and George K. Baum & Co., will underwrite all nine school district bond offerings approved last week by voters.
Voters rejected seven other bond requests on state ballots.
RBC, the Minneapolis-based regional investment bank and brokerage, will handle four bond sales totaling $64.9 million.
George K. Baum & Co., a Kansas City, Mo.-based company whose municipal finance business is based in Denver, will underwrite the other five approved offerings, including the state’s largest.
RBC had the winning bids for Aspen 1 ($33 million), Sterling’s Valley RE-1 ($23.7 million), Wray RD-2 in Yuma County ($7.8 million) and Logan County’s Frenchman RE-3 ($425,000).
The company likely will offer the bonds before the end of January to mostly institutional investors, such as banks and pension funds.
Retail investors in Colorado and elsewhere also could snap up some of the bonds, said Rudy Andras, an economist with RBC.
The company will net less than 1 percent of the total offering size, Andras said.
As for George K. Baum, it will underwrite the state’s largest approved offering, Thompson R-2J district’s $89 million bond sale. The district serves Loveland and northern Colorado.
It also will sell the bonds for Strasburg 31J ($6.7 million), Platte Valley RE7 ($4.3 million) and two for Briggsdale RE-10 ($3.5 million and $1.6 million).
The bonds likely will go to market sooner rather than later to lock in historically low interest rates, said Doug Houston, an executive vice president with George K. Baum.
Houston noted that interest rates are trending higher, meaning school districts will pay more interest as times goes on.
Even so, Houston said, “it takes a significant increase to dramatically” affect a school district’s total repayment figure.
Statewide, this year’s requests of $273.5 million were the lowest sought by school districts since 1991, when districts asked for $68 million statewide.
Of the bond requests, voters approved $170 million and rejected $103.5 million, the largest of which was $68 million by Brighton 27J in Adams County.
In 2004, bond requests topped $1 billion, the largest in state history.
Bond offerings were down this year because school districts focused on Referendum C, which allows the state to keep $3.7 billion that would otherwise be refunded to them under the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, said Phil Fox, deputy executive director of the Colorado Association of School Executives.
“Districts are gun-shy of other so-called state tax issues competing with them,” Fox said.
Staff writer Will Shanley can be reached at 303-820-1260 or wshanley@denverpost.com.
