Prudence Holt is not a person who rushes. She is a person who counts, and then counts again, and then asks whether there is a third way to count that might produce a different number. This is why the Municipal Treasury engaged her, and this is why her preliminary recommendation — delivered Friday afternoon in a 28-page memorandum bound in green card — has been received with a seriousness that its author would consider the bare minimum.

The recommendation is straightforward. Holt advises the Treasury to enter into forward contracts for approximately sixty percent of Phase 1’s copper requirements at current market prices. At Monday’s close of 667 florins per tonne — the thirty-second consecutive daily decline and the lowest since early December — this would lock in procurement costs for roughly 3,120 tonnes of the 5,200-tonne Phase 1 requirement.

The remaining forty percent, approximately 2,080 tonnes, would be purchased on the spot market in quarterly tranches over the construction period. This exposes the city to price volatility on the balance, but — Holt argues — provides flexibility to benefit from further declines.

The blended cost, at current prices, would be approximately 667 florins per tonne for the hedged portion. The bond prospectus was written with a baseline assumption of 740 florins per tonne. The difference, over Phase 1’s full copper requirement, amounts to a saving of approximately 380,000 florins — modest in the context of a 350-million-florin bond, but significant as a signal to the rating agency.

“The Continental Rating Agency’s ‘Satisfactory, Conditional’ rating specified a hedging strategy within sixty days,” Holt writes. “This recommendation satisfies that condition in substance and demonstrates fiscal discipline in execution.”

The memorandum devotes nine pages to risk analysis. Copper has fallen from 889 florins per tonne at the height of the Kaelmar crisis to 667 today. The decline has been remarkably consistent — thirty-two consecutive daily falls — driven by the resumption of eastern trade routes and the drawdown of speculative positions built during the crisis. Holt notes that at some point the decline must slow or reverse, and that forward contracts at current levels represent “an unusually favourable entry point by any historical standard.”

She is careful, however, to note what she cannot predict.

“Commodity markets are not in the business of cooperating with municipal treasuries,” the memorandum reads. “Copper may fall further. It may reverse sharply. What is certain is that 667 florins per tonne is a price at which Phase 1 can be built within budget, and certainty has a value that spot-market optimism does not.”

The Treasury working group — chaired by Deputy Treasurer Annabel Whitford and including representatives from the Municipal Works Office, the Miners’ Cooperative, and the Continental Rating Agency’s liaison office — meets Wednesday to review the recommendation. If endorsed, the forward contracts would be executed through the Bobington Exchange within a fortnight.

Nils Haversten of the Miners’ Cooperative, who sits on the working group, declined to comment on the recommendation but noted that the cooperative’s own production outlook remains “unchanged” at approximately 2,000 tonnes per annum, with expansion dependent on the geological survey.

The bond offering remains on track for May. Four of six financial institutions have now submitted formal expressions of interest. The most expensive page in the prospectus — the one that was blank until the rating agency filled it — is no longer blank.

The second most expensive page, it appears, will be Prudence Holt’s.