The Carroll City Council was presented with one bid last Friday on bond sales for a total of $4.475 million dollars. This includes the $3.8 million bond for the Carroll Public Library and City Hall projects as well as another $675,000 for upgrades at various parks throughout the community. Susanne Gerlach, with PFM Financial Advisors, LLC, brought the good news to the council at their Tuesday night meeting.
The rate the banks bid is 3.35 percent. Gerlach structured this as if it went to market, then each bank chose their portion of that total amount. The percentage they will receive each year depends on the size of their piece of the pie.
She also ran some numbers to see how the banks compared to the market rate. When fees were added to the bonds, it too came out to 3.35 percent. The city will use cash on hand to pay the cost of issuance. Gerlach then details how this structure will keep the promises made to the people of Carroll during the bond referendum campaign.
Even when calculating the pre-levy amount of roughly $934,000 on debt service, the tax rate falls below what the voters approved.
Then, in future years, when the street maintenance garage, the purchase of a new fire truck and the east gym, the rec pool and a rec center addition are added to the city’s debt, the tax rate would move to an estimated $1.55. The assumptions used to create timelines for those projects would be to have them beginning between 2019 and 2023. The council members expressed their gratitude to the financial institutes of Carroll who have wholly backed this project, beginning with the estimated million dollar donation of the North Adams Street building by Commercial Savings Bank.
