(1) The participating institution may fix, revise, charge, and collect rates, rents, fees, and charges for the use of and for the services furnished or to be furnished by each project and may contract with any person, partnership, association, corporation, or other body, public or private, in respect thereof. The rates, rents, fees, and charges must be fixed and adjusted in respect of the aggregate of rates, rents, fees, and charges from the project so as to provide funds sufficient with other revenues, if any, to:

(a) Pay the cost of maintaining, repairing, and operating the project and each portion thereof, to the extent that the payment of the cost has not otherwise been adequately provided for.

(b) Pay the principal of and the interest on outstanding revenue bonds of the authority issued in respect of the project as the bonds become due and payable.

(c) Create and maintain reserves required or provided for in any resolution authorizing, or trust agreement securing, the revenue bonds of the authority.

(2) A sufficient amount of the revenues derived in respect of a project, except the part of the revenues necessary to pay the cost of maintenance, repair, and operation and to provide reserves and provide for renewals, replacements, extensions, enlargements, and improvements provided for in the resolution authorizing the issuance of any revenue bonds of the authority or in the trust agreement securing them, must be set aside at regular intervals as provided in the resolution or trust agreement in a sinking or other similar fund that is hereby pledged to, and charged with, the payment of the principal of and the interest on the revenue bonds as they become due and the redemption price or the purchase price of bonds retired by call or purchase as therein provided. The pledge must be valid and binding from the time when the pledge is made. The rates, rents, fees, charges, and other revenues or other moneys so pledged and thereafter received by the participating institution must immediately be subject to the lien of the pledge without any physical delivery thereof or further act, and the lien of any pledge is valid and binding as against all parties having claims of any kind in tort, contract, or otherwise against the authority, irrespective of whether the parties have notice thereof. Neither the resolution nor any trust agreement by which a pledge is created need be filed or recorded except in the records of the authority.

(3) The use and disposition of moneys to the credit of a sinking or other similar fund must be subject to the resolution authorizing the issuance of the bonds or of the trust agreement. Except as otherwise provided in the resolution or the trust agreement, the sinking or other similar fund must be a fund for all revenue bonds issued to finance projects at a particular institution of higher education without distinction or priority of one over another. However, the authority in any resolution or trust agreement may provide that the sinking or other similar fund be the fund for a particular project at a participating institution and for payment of the revenue bonds issued to finance that project, and may, additionally, permit and provide for the issuance of revenue bonds having a subordinate lien in respect of the security authorized to other revenue bonds of the authority, and, in such case, the authority may create separate sinking or other similar funds in respect of the subordinate lien bonds.

History.—s. 18, ch. 2001-79.