The Fall 2009 TFLEx Workshop was held in Orange County, California, and was hosted by Bill Dineen and the OCTA. Our sincere thanks go out to Bill and his staff for the wonderful job they did in making this workshop a successful event. Attendance was down due to travel restrictions from many member agencies. To address this issue, three of the sessions were broadcast on the web, allowing members to view presentations and hear speakers. Our thanks go to Ray Garton for setting up the webcasting and making sure it worked well during the workshop. The successful experiment in webcasting will continue with future workshops. Thanks again to everyone at Orange County Transit.
The main topic of this workshop was The New Normal in transit finance. Bill Dineen welcomed participants and gave an overview of the workshop objectives. After his remarks, Bill turned the program over to Terry Cordell to provide the results of a survey he did prior to the workshop on current funding problems and service issues facing members. The survey results are attached. During the discussion, participants expanded on the issues they are currently facing and how they expect those issues to continue to affect their agencies moving forward.
Participants then gathered in smaller groups to come up with the three main issues they see continuing to affect their agencies moving forward; in other words, what their agencies were going to be dealing with as the new normal.
On Monday afternoon Irene DeMers led a discussion on the Significant Interest Group (SIG) calls done between workshops. Participation in the SIG calls has generally been good; but could always be better. Members agreed that two things could be different - 1) co-chairs should be rotated as needed and 2) an agenda team should be established to set topics for the calls and. Bill Dineen volunteered to be the new co-chair for the grants SIG. The calls will be webcast in the future, so participants can share presentations and other visual media.
Tuesday morning's session included two economists sharing their take on the new normal. Dr. Jerry Nickelsburg from UCLA discussed "Old Normals and New Normals" and concluded with the idea that the "new normal" may be the "old normal" with continued annual GDP growth in the 3.2% range. Dr. Christopher Thornberg, founding principal of Beacon Economics, gave a fast paced and fascinating presentation with his view being that the recovery will occur but will most like be slow. All members are encouraged to review Dr. Thornberg's presentation on the TFLEx web site, as it is full of great information on the national (and California) economy.
Tuesday afternoon's session concentrated on changes in the municipal bond markets. David Leininger, CFO at DART started things off with a discussion of his agency's recent bond sale. DART financed new capital construction by selling $1 billion in bonds, including $829 million in Build America Bonds.
Rodney Johnson, Deputy Treasurer of OCTA, gave a presentation on the bridge financing OCTA is using for the financing of the Highway 91 Express Lane placement, due to the collapse of the financial markets in 2008. The complicated transaction of the bridge financing has provided stability, and OCTA now has some breathing room to review options.
Jim Martling of Sperry Capital discussed his company's role in the OCTA Highway 91 Express Lane placement and how the markets have changed since the liquidity crunch. Nic Malas from Siebert, Brandford Shank & Co. echoed Jim's comments and added his own take on the issues.
The Spring 2010 Workshop will be held at the Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland Ohio in April 2010. The workshop will consist of sessions all day Monday and Tuesday until noon, with the business meeting to be held on Tuesday afternoon. Preliminary topics of the workshop will include the value of technology and the capital impact on operations, industrial relations and the role of unions, and societal changes that are leading to changes in transportation. More information will be forthcoming, including specific dates for the workshop.
The regular Business Meeting was chaired by Terry Matsumoto on Wednesday morning. Minutes of this meeting are attached as a separate document. All members are encouraged to attend the Business Meetings at the workshops.
All presentations from the Fall Workshop are available to members on the TFLEx Sharepoint website at http://tflex.securespsites.com.
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