Mayor Jones requests bond issue to fund museum, other projects

Mobile Mayor Sam Jones plans to ask the Mobile City Council to sell bonds to help finance more than

$25 million in construction projects, including the new maritime museum, a parking facility and a fire station with a police mini-precinct.

Jones will also ask the council to designate Mobile as a "recovery zone," so the federal government will reimburse a portion of the city's interest payments.

Both items have been placed on Tuesday's City Council agenda. Several council members said they would delay voting on the measures and send them to the council's Finance Committee.

City spokeswoman Barbara Drummond said Jones and members of his administration would not discuss the particulars of the bond issue until Tuesday.

The total amount of the bond issue was not disclosed in documents filed to the council.

A resolution given to the council said the bond issue will help finance the construction of the $25 million maritime museum, known as GulfQuest; a $1.1 million parking facility that GulfQuest and the nearby Alabama Cruise Terminal will share; and a $500,000 fire station and police mini-precinct planned for the Theodore area that annexed into Mobile last year.

The city would also refinance a

$66 million bond issue from 2002, which would create about $3.6 million in savings to put toward the museum construction, according to the resolution.

The bond issue is coming on the heels of a tough economic year for Mobile. Total revenues dropped from $245.6 million in the 2008 fiscal year to $235 million in 2009, despite an annexation in fall of 2008 that brought a retail-rich area near Theodore into the city limits.

The City Council a month ago passed a budget that included cuts to several departments.

Despite financial troubles, Moody's Investors Service earlier this year announced it would keep the city's bond rating at A1 — the highest such rating in recent history — for this bond issue.

A report from the company stated that Mobile will remain financially stable "given a history of conservative budgeting, prudent fiscal management and a growing economic base."