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****PRELIMINARY AND TENTATIVE FINDINGS**** <br />' An accounting treatment to pay these annual amounts to the member from the separate account maintained <br />for withdrawal payments. <br />➢ Use of the withdrawal payment funds to temporarily correct deficiencies in other operating funds. <br />• Provisions for the FMPA to use "excess amounts" of the funds from the withdrawal payment account at its <br />sole discretion. However, there is no clear specification in the power supply project contract of what <br />constitutes "excess amounts." <br />Although one ARP member submitted a termination notice that indicated a withdrawal date of September 30, 2016, <br />no ARP members have actually withdrawn from the FMPA. As such, the FMPA has not prepared any such true -up <br />calculations and it is not clear how the FMPA will interpret the terms "additional benefits" and "excess amounts" <br />when the member ultimately withdraws. The FMPA's sole discretion to determine "additional benefits" to the <br />member and move "excess" amounts to the "General Reserve Fund" enables the FMPA to unilaterally direct the use <br />of withdrawal payments beyond the assurance of the fixed costs responsibility of the withdrawing member. <br />A review of termination and exit provisions of bond resolutions and power supply project contracts as described in <br />the official statements for eight JAAs' all requirements service system revenue bond issues" disclosed that only four <br />of the eight JAAs' power supply project contracts contain any exit provisions, such provisions are highly restrictive, <br />and none of these JAAs provided for a three-year notice termination provision. Three of the four JAAs provided for <br />member withdrawal but only when there is no debt outstanding, which is standard industry practice. While debt -free <br />JAA projects can occur, it is not the industry norm for JAA projects to be debt -free. Based on the results of the <br />review, the FMPA's termination and exit notice provisions are not consistent with common JAA practice because <br />JAA power supply contracts normally do not allow members to exit the contract while any project debt is outstanding. <br />As indicated above, only one other JAA allowed a member to exit while project debt was still outstanding, and the <br />contract required the withdrawing member to pay its share of debt service, which is consistent with the FMPA <br />contract provisions. <br />The FMPA's assumptions used in estimating the withdrawing member's share of costs to retire debt and project <br />operational fixed costs, and the practice of subtracting excluded resources from the coincident peak demand <br />calculation to estimate the member's share, appear to be reasonable. An evaluation of the FMPA's calculations of <br />estimated withdrawal payments m April 2012 and June 2014, in the amounts of $386 million ($108 million for debt <br />and $278 million for operational fixed costs) and $46 million, for the Cities of Key West and Vero Beach, respectively, <br />disclosed that the primary differences in the withdrawal payments for the two Cities are (1) Key \Vest would be <br />required pursuant to its contract with the FMPA to purchase at net value all generation, transmission, and related <br />assets owned by the FMPA in providing ARP service to Key West, and (2) Vero Beach would not be required to pay <br />the debt component as the City had not, since 201(1, obtained any power through the ARP. The FMPA's calculations <br />of the withdrawal payments in these instances followed the respective ARP power supply power contracts' withdrawal <br />provisions. However, the fact that the FMPA has the sole discretion in determining the actual severance amount and <br />the substantial cash payment due on withdrawal, in effect, represents a compelling case against the decision for an <br />ARP member to withdraw. <br />14 The official bond statements of these JAAs contained summaries of power sales contracts in sufficient detail to identify the <br />relevant termination provisions. While such official statements do not include provisions of power supply project contracts and <br />bond resolutions in their entirety, they do provide summary language covering their most substantive provisions. <br />27 <br />29 <br />