ZIONS PUBLIC FINANCE - Key Persons
Mr. Buxton is a registered municipal securities representative and municipal advisor representative has a broad range of municipal finance experience throughout Utah and Idaho. He joined Zions Public Finance, Inc (ZPFI) in 2001. Since joining the ZPFI team, Mr. Buxton has assisted in over $3 Billion in municipal transactions. Most recently, he has been the banker representing Zions as a co-managing Underwriter on the new multi-billion dollar Salt Lake City Airport Redevelopment Program (ARP). Mr. Buxton works extensively with many school district's across the state including Salt Lake City, Tooele, Logan, Box Elder, Carbon, and Grand among others and specializes in successfully passing municipal bond elections. His work with dozens of cities and special districts provide him the opportunity to finance water, sewer, power, roads, municipal facilities, and RDA projects of all types and sizes. He has worked with several manufacturing companies in issuing tax-exempt Industrial Development Bonds through the Private Activity Bond Authority and has also has been very active helping municipal entities with their low income housing needs.
Mr. Buxton is a 1999 graduate of the University of Utah with a Bachelor of Arts Degree. Mr. Buxton was a high school All-American tennis player and was on an athletic tennis scholarship while at the University of Utah. He was named a member of the conference all-academic team. After graduation from the University of Utah, Mr. Buxton spent two years in New York City working for Paine Webber on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange ("NYSE"). While at the NYSE, Mr. Buxton assisted in the trading of several billion dollars of stocks. This finance experience on Wall Street laid a solid foundation for his current career in the Municipal Bond industry.
Alyson Price Cook joined Zions Public Finance in 2007. She is the head of our quantitative group which is responsible for developing quantitative and financial analysis for the issuance of municipal bonds, including bond structuring and sizing analysis, cash flow analysis, tax impact analysis, and refunding analysis. Ms. Price is a registered Municipal Securities Representative for Zions and holds Series 50 and Series 52 securities licenses.
Ms. Price has extensive experience with quantitative analysis and has assisted with structuring and analyzing numerous bond transactions. She has worked on structuring general obligation bonds, revenue bonds, tax increment bonds, special assessment bonds, lease revenue bonds and stimulus program bonds.
Ms. Price graduated with high distinction from Brigham Young University with a Master of Public Administration degree with an emphasis in Public Finance. She was a recipient of the Karl N. Snow Award, presented annually to the graduating MPA student with the highest academic record. She also graduated Magna Cum Laude from Brigham Young University with a B.S. in Finance. While in school, Ms. Price worked as a graduate assistant for courses in Advanced Quantitative Decision Analysis, Ethics and Managerial Economics.
Mr. Baker has over sixteen years of public finance experience, and currently serves as lead municipal advisor to clients in a broad array of categories including special districts (Utah Transit Authority, Snyderville Basin Special Recreation District, Salt Lake City Mosquito Abatement District), Cities (Provo, Park City, Payson, Santaquin), electric power (UAMPS and UMPA), higher education (Utah State University, Weber State University, Snow College, Southern Utah University), and others including Summit County and South Summit School District.
Since joining Zions Public Finance, Inc., Mr. Baker has been involved in hundreds of transactions totaling over $10 billion in par amount.
Mr. Baker is a registered municipal securities representative having passed the Series 52 exam and a municipal advisor representative having passed the Series 50 exam. He previously has held both Series 7 and Series 63 licenses.
Mr. Baker is a 2004 finance graduate of the Brigham Young University MBA Program. He was the top student in his class and a recipient of the Hawes Scholarship, given to the best all-around students as demonstrated by academic excellence, leadership, maturity, ethics and values, commitment, and devotion to the Marriott School mission. He has taught graduate finance classes as an adjunct professor in BYU's Romney Institute of Public Management.
Ms. Bertot joined Zions Public Finance in 2004. She works in the firm's municipal research and continuing disclosure department and is responsible for preparing and disseminating preliminary official statements and final official statements; municipal research projects; continuing disclosure and organizing public bond sales. Ms. Bertot has been assigned to handle both primary and continuing disclosure for our Utah and Idaho clients.
Cara is also responsible for monitoring ongoing regulatory compliance with the SEC municipal disclosure rule 15c2-12 for over 80 Utah and Idaho issuers. Her work includes filing annual continuing disclosure memorandums and material event notices, as they occur, on the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board's website at www.emma.msrb.org (Electronic Municipal Marketplace Access).
Additionally, Ms. Bertot oversees departmental accounts payable and receivable functions. Ms. Bertot graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in communication with an emphasis on multicultural human relations from Saint Cloud State University in Minnesota. She is a registered municipal securities representative for Zions Public Finance, Inc. having passed the Series 52 exam and a municipal advisor registered representative having passed the Series 50 exam.
Mr. Lee joined Zions Public Finance, Inc. in October of 1998. He brings over 20 years of financial and quantitative experience in the industry. He has been Zion's senior analyst since 2000, where he performs bond structuring and sizing analysis, cost benefit analysis, and tax impact analysis for bond elections. He is also responsible for monitoring and identifying bonds for refunding for issuers in the state of Utah. His experience includes working with general obligation bonds, sales tax revenue bonds, water and sewer bonds, electric revenue bonds, tax increment bonds, lease revenue bonds, student fee and auxiliary system bonds from universities, and was heavily involved with structuring of stimulus bonds including build america bonds, qualified school construction bonds, qualified zone academy bonds, and qualified energy conservation bonds.
Mr. Lee has worked with issuers ranging from the State of Utah, numerous counties, school districts, cities, and special service and improvement districts, mostly coming from the state of Utah. He has also worked with issuers from Idaho, Arizona, Oregon, and Texas.
Prior to his employment with Zions Public Finance, Inc., Mr. Lee worked in the Economic and Statistical Unit at the Utah State Tax Commission. He is a registered municipal securities representative and municipal advisor representative
Mr. McGee has several years' experience in and around government. He founded the Policy Hacking Lab at Utah Valley University where he worked with local and state officials to craft innovative public policy. He worked for the United States Government Accountability Office auditing the Internal Revenue Service. His work informed Congress of the decision-making structure between the IRS and the Treasury Department and the economic implications of the 2015 Protecting Americans from Tax Hikes Act. Mr. McGee also served in the Utah's Lieutenant Governor's Office working on annexations, incorporations, and elections.
Mr. McGee earned a BA degree in Political Science with a concentration in American Government from Utah Valley University and an MPA from Indiana University, where he founded the school's Journal of Public and Environmental Affairs. Mr. McGee is a registered municipal securities representative, having passed the Series 52 exam and a municipal advisor representative, having passed the Series 50 exam.
Ms. Harris joined Zions Public Finance in 2011. She has 18 years experience in the finanicial services industry and for the past 13 years, she has specialized in municipal consulting and assessment administration. She has been involved as the lead consultant and project manager for numerious projects throughout the intermountain region.
She has a broad range of experience including fiscal impacts analysis, economic development, redevelopment, NEPA documents, transportation and land use planning, public involvement and feasibility/market studies, impact fees and cost of service studies. She has worked on projects for numerous counties, cities and towns throughout the State including Salt Lake County, Salt Lake City, Provo, Ogden, Midvale, St. George, South Salt Lake, North Salt Lake, North Ogden, Cottonwood Heights, Holladay, Herriman, Saratoga Springs, Highland, Lehi, Roy, South Ogden, Murray, Harrisvillve, Washington Terrace and Alta. She has also done consulting work outside of the State for Henderson, Nevada. Ms. Harris also manages several SAA's throughout the State in Washington, Weber, Utah and Wasatch counties.
Previous to working as a municipal consultant, Ms. Harris travelled nationwide as a developer and consultant for a corporate financial planning software development company and worked as a statistical analyst for one of the largest labor law firms in Washington DC.
Ms. Harris graduated with a BA in economics from Brigham Young University
Job Titles:
- Senior Vice President
- Lead Banker
Mr. Ward is a licensed municipal securities representative, municipal advisor representative, and municipal securities principal with nearly 18 years of municipal finance experience throughout Utah and Idaho. His expertise covers a wide variety of municipal needs including water, sewer, power, roads, municipal facilities, hospitals, development and more. His work includes extensive analysis and modeling for enterprise systems owned and operated by municipalities.
Over his career, Mr. Ward has been the lead banker on and successfully completed hundreds of municipal financings with a total par amount in excess of $3 billion. He is the lead financial advisor to a wide variety of local governments including Clearfield, Herriman, Lehi, Pleasant Grove, Saratoga Springs, and a host of other cities; Davis and Weber Counties; Davis, Jordan, and Provo School Districts; and utility districts such as the Metropolitan Water District of Salt Lake & Sandy.
To help alleviate a growing housing affordability concern, Mr. Ward has developed expertise in housing projects having completed financings for multiple single- and multi-family housing projects throughout Utah and Idaho.
Mr. Ward is an MPA graduate from the Marriott School of Management at Brigham Young University, where he also works at times as an Adjunct Professor of public finance, instructing graduate students from both the public and business administration programs.
Mr. Anderson joined Zions Public Finance, Inc. (ZPFI) after spending 28 years as a City Manager and municipal finance professional for Heber City Corporation, Utah. In addition to providing organizational direction, Mr. Anderson had responsibility for preparation of the annual budget and oversight of the financial reporting for the City. He was also responsible for debt management which included the issuance of debt for capital projects. These transactions included issuance of Revenue Bonds, Sales Tax Bonds, Special Assessment Area Bonds and equipment lease financings. Mr. Anderson brings to Zions the issuers perspective on municipal operations and transactions.
Mr. Anderson is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) and served as President of the Utah Government Finance Officers Association.
For the past 21 years, Susie has specialized in economic consulting and planning and has been the lead consultant on some of the largest and most challenging projects in the intermountain region. Susie recently wrote the Economic Best Practices for Salt Lake County that is an integral part of the Cooperative County Plan, created an urban renewal area (URA) which is the largest in the State of Utah for the town of Vineyard (former Geneva Steel Site), testified before the Governor's Legislative Task Force on economic policies and procedures in Utah and led a team that wrote and was awarded a $5 million HUD sustainability grant for a consortium of government entities along the Wasatch Front including UDOT, UTA, Envision Utah, Salt Lake City, Salt Lake County, the University of Utah and others.
Job Titles:
- Public Finance Specialist
Ms. Calkins joined Zions Public Finance in 2008. She supports the bankers by preparing marketing presentation materials, preparing equipment leases, producing and organizing deal-related materials and arranging client events.
Ms. Calkins graduated from the University of Utah with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Art History. Before joining Zions Bank, Ms. Calkins worked at the Museum of Utah Art & History as the Administrative Assistant. During her free time, Ms. Calkins oil paints. Ms. Calkins has experience in office administration and the nonprofit sector.