he Tax-Exempt Leasing Program offers the lowest possible market lease rates, professional management and fair terms to cities, counties and school districts throughout California. The Program has been designed to provide public agencies with a simple and cost-effective means of financing or refinancing equipment and facilities.

The financing instrument, the lease/purchase agreement (the "Lease"), offers public agencies an alternative to the traditional pay-as-you-go approach. Lease terms normally approximate the useful life of the equipment/facilities, so that lease payments correspond to the assets as they are being used. This approach helps maintain reserves for contingency purposes as well as allowing for public agencies to accelerate the funding of capital projects.

ABAG Leasing transactions include funding for major equipment and vehicles for all types of public jurisdictions

This program finances a wide variety of equipment, such as:

· Computers/Copiers

· Vehicles

· HVAC/Lighting

· Telephone Systems

· Office Furniture

· Networking Systems

· Modular Buildings

· Parking Meters

· Street/Traffic Lights

The Program can also finance retrofit projects such as energy retrofits and LED traffic signal retrofits as well as the following facilities projects:

· Site Acquisitions

· Corporate Yards

· Administrative Buildings

· Police/Fire Stations

· Water/Sewer Projects

· Streets/Bridges

The ABAG Leasing Program is based on competitively bidding each lease transaction, either individually or on a pooled basis, to provide the public agency the lowest possible interest rate.

To assist in this process, ABAG has engaged the services of a Program Administrator to help the lessee applicant prepare a description of the items to be financed, prepare a bid package, distribute the bid package to both local and national lease capital providers, receive bids, recommend the best qualifying bidder, process/negotiate final documentation and close the financing.