READING, Pa. \u2013 The Berks County Commissioners voted Thursday on a resolution to continue an agreement between the county, the Berks County Convention Center Authority and Manufacturers and Traders Trust Company.<\/p>\n
Peter T. Edelman, solicitor for the authority, explained the extension of the existing agreement as it relates to a bond refinancing strategy.<\/p>\n
Edelman explained that the authority is moving forward with a tax-exempt bond financing of existing 2014 bonds, as well as funding needs for capital improvements for both the convention center and the performing arts center.<\/p>\n
Manufacturers and Traders Trust Company is identified as part of the agreement because it serves as bond trustee.<\/p>\n
Edelman offered a further explanation of the existing agreement.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe hotel tax was first implemented in 1997, and it was implemented in compliance with the provisions of the Third-Class County Convention Center Authority Act,\u201d Edelman said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat’s the same act under which the authority was formed by the Board of Commissioners. The Act provides how the collection of the tax is allocated, and it specifies that 80% is to be used for Convention Center purposes and it’s transferred to the authority and held in the hotel tax account and the other 20% is sent to the Visitors Bureau and is used by the Visitors Bureau to promote the county\u2019s many cultural and educational facilities,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe other key component of the act is that it provides that if there’s ever a default with respect to outstanding bonds, that allocation is changed so that 100% of the tax is used for bondholders,\u201d Eldelman said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, this agreement basically memorializes that allocation and provides a mechanism for the trustee in the event there is a default to notify the county to change the allocation to 100% to the authority instead of an 80\/20 split,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n
Edelman added that this agreement is currently in place and all that is being asked of the board is to extend the same agreement.<\/p>\n
\u201cI do want to make clear that this debt is not a debt of the county in any way,\u201d he emphasized. \u201cIt’s solely debt of the authority basically secured by the flow of those tax revenues,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Commissioners Dante Santoni Jr. and Michael Rivera reiterated that the resolution does not create any debt for the county.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere have been some questions about previous decisions we’ve made about the bond financing,\u201d Rivera said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI just want to be clear it’s not a debt to the county, and it’s not the county giving the authority the money either because again, Commissioner Santoni said the last time we did this with Albright, there were comments that the county is giving the money to Albright and agreeing to take over the debt and that is not in any way what is happening; neither then or now,\u201d Rivera explained.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe just wanted to make sure that the public is aware of that and to clarify that before we take the vote,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Edelman confirmed that the commissioners were correct, saying that PNC Bank is the lender and providing 100% of the financing.<\/p>\n
On another topic, Santoni announced that the annual Book Bonanza, which was held at the South Campus in July, raised a record amount of $140,000 for the Berks County Library System.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"READING, Pa. \u2013 The Berks County Commissioners voted Thursday on a resolution to continue an agreement between the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":268995,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[63038,64805,58365,113377,18485,66813,113376,128,130,129],"class_list":["post-268994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-berks-county-convention-center-authority","tag-convention-center","tag-dante-santoni-jr","tag-manufacturers-and-traders-trust-company","tag-michael-rivera","tag-performing-arts-center","tag-peter-t-edelman","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=268994"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268994\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/268995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=268994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=268994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=268994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}