Bond Refinancing Would Save County $600,000

Putnam County Commissioners will look at refinancing a 2010 bond when they meet next week.

County Mayor Randy Porter said the $7.2 million bond helped build the Highlands Business Park.

“It is now available to be recalled and refinanced. The original rate was 3.25-percent,” Porter said. “It’s hard to guess as to what the exact rate’s going to be when it comes up in March or April of next year, but we’re guesstimating it will be somewhere around 1.8-percent. So it will be about $600,000 savings to the county if we refinance it.”

The Putnam County Fiscal Review Committee recommended moving forward with refinancing the bond during Monday night’s meeting. If approved by the full county commission, Porter said the county will have refinanced all but one of its active bonds.

“Our highest bond that we had…that 2001 school bond, which had a 5.25-percent interest rate, was locked in. We couldn’t do anything with it. It couldn’t be refinanced,” Porter said. “We’re paying that off this year so it will be gone. Once we get this bond (business park bond) refinanced, our highest interest rate that we’ll have on any bond is 3-percent.”

Porter noted that the county’s debt management had improved since he took office five years ago.

“In 2014 when I came into office our total debt was $237 million.” Porter said. “Once we make our bond payments and interest payments this year we’ll be down to $135 million. So we’ve paid off over $100,000 in debt since 2014. We haven’t had to borrow any debt over those years, but of course, with the jail addition and new school coming up we’re going to have some debt in the future that we’re going to have to do.”

The Putnam County Commission meets Monday, December 16 at 6 p.m.