Before you start
Eligibility & Program Fit Checklist
What the Authority needs to confirm before a scoping call: borrower type, project purpose, the repayment source, and any funding already awarded or applied for.
Request from the Authority →Resources
What a board needs before it authorizes a financing.
The documents an agency needs in order to transact with the Authority, plain-language explanations of how the financing actually works, and the vocabulary that comes up around the dais.
Member Packet
Everything your board needs to join.
The membership overview, a sample staff report and resolution, and the two-page Non-Charter Membership Agreement. The templates are also available in Word.
CalMuni PFA Membership Overview
What the Authority is, what membership gives your agency, and the three steps to join.
Sample Staff Report
A staff report recommending non-charter (non-voting) membership, ready to adapt for your agenda.
Sample Resolution
A resolution approving non-charter membership and authorizing execution of the membership agreement.
Non-Charter Membership Agreement
The two-page agreement between your agency and the Authority.
Documents & Forms
What staff needs to move a financing forward.
The eligibility checklist and the program guides. Anything not yet posted can be requested from the Authority.
Program guides
Program Guides
Plain-language guides to each program: the problem it solves, how it works, what your agency gets, and what it needs to provide.
Request from the Authority →Understanding the Authority
How the financing works, explained in plain language.
Written for a board member or a finance staffer new to conduit financing, not only for a specialist.
What a conduit issuer is, and is not
How the Authority issues bonds and lends the proceeds to a borrower, why the obligations are limited, and why the Authority is the issuer rather than your agency's municipal advisor.
The three routes to capital
Federal and state programs, private placement, and public market bonds compared side by side, with what each is best for and how they can be combined.
Storage, efficiency, and resilience
How an agency finances battery storage, efficiency upgrades, and microgrids, and how state and utility incentives, and federal credits where still available, are layered in.
Impact fees financed, without general fund exposure
How developers finance impact fees through a district CalMuni PFA forms with the local agency's consent, repaid by the benefiting property rather than the general fund.
Board meetings, agendas, and notices
The Board of Directors, and the regular meeting agendas and special meeting notices the Authority posts under the Brown Act.
Glossary
The vocabulary of conduit financing, defined.
The terms that come up most often in this work, explained the way you would explain them to a board rather than the way they read in an offering document.
- Conduit issuer
- A public agency that issues bonds on behalf of a borrower and lends the proceeds to it. The borrower repays from its own pledged revenues; the issuer pledges nothing of its own.
- Joint powers authority (JPA)
- A public agency formed by two or more agencies under Government Code section 6500 and following to jointly exercise a power they each hold. CalMuni PFA is one.
- Limited obligation
- A bond payable solely from a specified pledged source. It is not a debt of the issuer, the State, or any member agency, and no taxing power secures it.
- Marks-Roos Local Bond Pooling Act
- The California act that lets a joint powers authority pool financings: multiple series under a single trust, so agencies share issuance cost while each obligation stays legally separate.
- Series
- One group of bonds issued under an indenture with its own security and terms. Two series under the same trust can have entirely different repayment sources and no exposure to one another.
- Installment sale agreement
- The contract by which a borrower agrees to repay the Authority for a financed project over time. It defines the repayment terms and the security behind them.
- Elective pay (direct pay)
- The mechanism that lets a tax-exempt entity receive a qualifying clean-energy tax credit as a cash payment from the IRS rather than as an offset against tax it does not owe.
- Private placement
- A financing sold directly to one or a small number of banks or institutional investors rather than offered publicly. Typically faster and more flexible, and suited to smaller transactions.
- Public offering
- A financing sold into the public municipal market through underwriters, with ratings and a formal disclosure document. Suited to larger transactions where competition improves pricing.
- TEFRA hearing
- The public approval hearing federal tax law requires before certain private-activity and 501(c)(3) bonds are issued, held by the applicable elected body after published notice.
- Community facilities district (Mello-Roos)
- A district formed by a public agency in which a special tax is levied on property within its boundaries to fund public facilities and services, and to repay bonds issued for them.
- Assessment district
- A district in which property owners are assessed in proportion to the special benefit their property receives from an improvement, under the 1913 and 1915 Acts.
- Value-to-lien
- The ratio of appraised property value to the bond lien on that property in a land-secured financing. A central credit and disclosure metric, reviewed before issuance.
- Continuing disclosure
- The obligation, under SEC Rule 15c2-12, to file annual reports and notices of specified events for the life of the bonds. The borrower is the obligated person, not the Authority.
- EMMA
- The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board's Electronic Municipal Market Access system, the public repository where official statements and continuing disclosure filings are posted.
- CDIAC
- The California Debt and Investment Advisory Commission, which receives the Report of Proposed Debt Issuance, the Report of Final Sale, and the Annual Debt Transparency Report.
- Post-issuance compliance
- The tax, disclosure, reporting, and covenant obligations that begin at closing and run for the life of a financing. The Authority administers these for the financings it issues.
- Independent Registered Municipal Advisor (IRMA)
- A municipal advisor an issuer is represented by, which allows dealers to communicate with that issuer without themselves becoming municipal advisors under SEC rules.
Looking for disclosures?
The Authority's issuer disclosures live on their own page.
Limited-obligation status, fees and conflicts, continuing disclosure, and the California debt-transparency reporting the Authority files.
Questions
Getting what you need from this page.
The materials on this page are open to any California public agency, member or not. Borrowing is different: agencies that finance through the Authority join as members. Joining is free, carries no obligation to finance, takes a single action by your governing board, and pledges none of your agency's funds. Optional services an agency elects are billed separately.
No. CalMuni PFA is the issuer. It is not your agency's municipal advisor, and its municipal advisor and bond counsel are engaged by and act for the Authority. The Authority can tell you what a structure would look like and what it would cost. Whether to finance, and on what terms, is your agency's decision, and you are encouraged to consider retaining your own advisors.
Ask. Use the contact form or write to the Authority and say which document you need and what the project is.
On the About page, with the Board roster. Regular meeting agendas are posted at least 72 hours before each meeting, and special meeting notices at least 24 hours before.
On the Disclosures page: limited-obligation status, fees and conflicts, continuing disclosure, and California debt-transparency reporting.
Talk to the Authority about a project.
Tell us about the project, the agency, and the timeline. The Authority will confirm eligibility, point you to the right program, and return a preliminary read, at no cost.