Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Investment Policy topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Buncombe County staff propose clarifying and modernizing investment policy; changes headed to June 17 vote
Summary
Finance staff presented recommended edits to Buncombe County’s investment policy on June 3, including language clarifications, removal of certain portfolio percentage caps, updated collateral alignment with state guidance, and elimination of some performance-benchmark language. Staff will return a final draft for adoption at the June 17 meeting.
Melissa Moore, a county finance staff member, briefed the Buncombe County Board of Commissioners on recommended updates to the county’s investment policy at the June 3 meeting.
Moore said the policy was last adopted in 2020 and the recommended updates aim to modernize language (replacing repeated uses of “securities” with “investments”), define employee delegation where the policy referred to an “investment officer” (a role the county does not have), remove procedural detail from the policy text, and align collateral language with state guidelines.
More substantive changes include consolidating the separate 5-year maturity references into a single “maximum maturity” section rather than repeating it under each investment type, removing several total-portfolio percentage thresholds for state investments and certificates of deposit, and dropping bankers’ acceptances from permitted investments. Moore said the portfolio-percentage limits had at times restricted staff’s ability to place funds into higher-yield short-term CDs during recent market conditions.
Moore also said staff removed language referencing a specific market benchmark used for performance reporting because shifts in interest-rate conditions had made that benchmark less meaningful. She said downgrade-of-security language was already covered elsewhere in policy text.
Commissioners asked for more detail on the removed benchmark and the downgrade language; Moore said she would provide commissioners with the supporting notes ahead of the June 17 meeting. Moore said the recommended revisions will come back to the board on June 17 for formal adoption.
No formal vote was taken on June 3; the board requested the draft and supporting materials be shared with commissioners before the June 17 meeting.
