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The Austin City Council approved up to $575 million of water and wastewater system revenue refunding and improvement bonds on Thursday.<\/p>\n The Austin City Council approved up to $575 million of water and wastewater system revenue refunding and improvement bonds on Thursday.<\/p>\n
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Austin, Texas, will sell up to $575 million of water and wastewater system revenue refunding and improvement bonds possibly later this month after the city council approved the debt deal on Thursday.<\/p>\n
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The majority of the revenue bond proceeds \u2014 $450 million \u2014 will refinance short-term commercial paper into long-term bonds, allowing Austin Water to take advantage of currently favorable market conditions and restore the available capacity under its tax-exempt commercial paper program for future borrowing, according to a city staff recommendation.<\/p>\n
Another $75 million is earmarked for refunding some callable Series 2015 A bonds.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Using interest rates as of February 2026, the transaction is estimated to produce $8.7 million in present value savings,” the staff recommendation said.<\/p>\n
New money bonds totaling up to $50 million will fund capital projects for the Walnut Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant. The bonds are secured by Austin Water’s net revenue.<\/p>\n
Subject to market conditions and other factors, the debt is expected to be priced the week of March 23, according to a city spokesperson.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, Fitch Ratings assigned an AA-minus and stable outlook to the bonds, citing the water system’s “very strong” financial and operating risk profiles.<\/p>\n
“The system’s leverage, measured as net adjusted debt to adjusted funds available for debt service, was very low at 5.3x in fiscal 2025,” Fitch’s rating report said.<\/p>\n
Ratings are also expected from Moody’s Ratings and S&P Global Ratings.<\/p>\n
The deal’s underwriter team consists of senior manager Raymond James, co-senior manager BofA Securities, and co-managers Mesirow Financial and Piper Sandler.<\/p>\n
McCall, Parkhurst & Horton is the deal’s bond counsel, Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe is disclosure counsel, and PFM Financial Advisors is the municipal advisor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Austin City Council approved up to $575 million of water and wastewater system revenue refunding and improvement…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":201754,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133,79519,22095,79520,22093,27,22092],"class_list":{"0":"post-201753","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-austin","8":"tag-austin","9":"tag-austin-headlines","10":"tag-austin-news","11":"tag-primary-bond-market","12":"tag-public-finance","13":"tag-refunding-bonds","14":"tag-revenue-bonds","15":"tag-texas","16":"tag-water-bonds"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=201753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201753\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/201754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=201753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=201753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=201753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}