The city is considering a request by an Iowa-based transcendental-meditation organization, Global Country of World Peace, for more than $9 million in tax-exempt financing to create a New York headquarters.

The city’s Economic Development Corp. is looking at the Global Country application to have the triple-tax-exempt bonds issued, officials said, and has not yet decided whether to forward it for consideration by the city Industrial Development Agency. That agency’s 15-member board would decide whether Global Country should get the tax-exempt financing. Officials said it was unclear whether the application would be vetted in time for the development agency’s next meeting in March.

“We received an application from the organization, and we are reviewing it,” the director of communications for the Economic Development Corp., Michael Sherman, said. “We have not made a decision on whether we will move forward with the project.”

According to the project’s financing proposal obtained by The New York Sun, the group, which describes itself as a nonprofit corporation organized and operated for charitable, educational, and scientific purposes related to alternative medicine, wellness, and preventative health care, wants to buy the building at 70 Broad St. to house a New York headquarters.

Global Country wants to renovate and equip about 15,000 square feet of space to turn it into a “parliamentary style hall” and a Maharishi Ayur-Veda Health Center offering alternative medicine. The project would cost $9.295 million, the proposal said – a little more than half of it for the purchase of the building.

The president of Global Country of World Peace, Robert Wynne, is the freshly-minted mayor of Maharishi Vedic City, Iowa’s newest city, which was founded July 25, 2001. The group’s spiritual leader is Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, whose followers included John Lennon.

Last week, the maharishi offered world leaders a simple formula to “raise their nations to invincibility, create permanent world peace, and render all life free from problems, negativity, and suffering.” Among his prescriptions: He invited governments to contact his University of World Peace in Holland to train groups of experts who would “prevent negativity.”

According to the group’s project-financing proposal obtained by the Sun, the Iowa company would put up about $230,000 and receive the proceeds of up to $9.5 million in bonds with interest exempt from city, state, and federal taxes. The group also requested a mortgage-recording tax waiver, which is worth about $100,000 in lost tax revenue, according to city projections.

In return for the tax breaks, the group would create 20 to 30 jobs, the proposal said. That could mean an additional $843,000 in associated taxes for city coffers over the next 20 years.

Even so, some board members of the Industrial Development Agency raised questions about the suitability of providing tax exemptions to Global Country. The comptroller’s representative on the agency questioned whether the organization was fiscally capable of guaranteeing the bonds.

As currently envisioned, the Global Country of World Peace bonds would be underwritten by Roosevelt & Cross and would be sold at a fixed rate, not to exceed 7.5%, with a term of 25 years. The Maharishi Bedic Education Development Corp. would guarantee the debt. It gets most of its money, the financing plan said, through contributions.

The city began considering the project after the group was endorsed by Senator Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, in a letter to the city urging support for the bond issue.

Should the Economic Development Corp. give the project the nod, which officials stressed was not a certainty, the Industrial Development Agency’s approval of the plan would be required. The agency’s board has 15 voting members: five ex-officio members, one member appointed by each of the five borough presidents, and five members appointed by the mayor.