By refinancing the Texas County Justice Center, county officials essentially saved the equivalent of one year in payments.
“We saved $1.2-plus million on interest. That’s pretty significant,” Presiding Commissioner Fred Stenger said. “And we put in a five-year clause stating that if interest was to go down again, then we could refinance again. This is a nice way to save taxpayers in the county money, and help keep taxes where they are.”
The new 2-percent annual rate is half the old rate of just more than 4-percent. Stenger said the county’s payments on the facility add up to about $1.4 million. It will be paid off in 2025.
“It’s kind of a lofty goal, but I’d like to see it get paid off a year early,” Stenger said. “We’ll see. Our sales taxes were kind of flat this year.”
Three voter-approved half-cent sales taxes are involved in funding the 61,000 square-foot Justice Center, opened in 2008 and located on Grand Avenue in Houston. Stenger said the three taxes combined to generate $15,000 more last year than the previous year.
The refinancing ball got rolling when representatives of an independent finance company out of St. Louis offered last year to look over the bonds and subsequently indicated they could save the county about $1 million by refinancing –– or “re-participating”.
“We figured out of due diligence we should get in touch with the people who had already had them,” Stenger said.
That firm is the George Baum Co., from Kansas City.
“They said they could probably beat that,” Stenger said. “We started talking with them and they came in several thousand dollars better, so we went ahead and signed with them.”
After the county’s old revenue bonds were paid off, new ones were eligible to be sold Dec. 16.
“Our understanding is that they were sold in a matter of minutes once they hit the market,” Stenger said. “They were purchased by financial institutions, which indicates they were pretty good bonds.”
Buyers included Landmark Bank and Licking’s Town and Country Bank.
“That shows some good local support,” said associate commissioner John Casey.
“The Justice Center is the envy of a lot of counties around the state,” Stenger said. “We’re appreciative of the voters who allowed us to get it done, and the employees certainly appreciate having a state-of-the-art building to work out of.”
Stenger said the county’s annual budget was finalized earlier this month.
“We were able to give a modest pay increase to all employees and increase almost every department’s budgets,” he said. “We had a very sufficient balance to start the year, and this is the first time I can recall that we didn’t have anyone want to argue about what they were budgeted. The department heads submitted their need and want lists, and we unfortunately had to trim some of the want lists, but when we talked to them each independently, they all left OK with how things were done.
“I really think we got a pretty good jump on 2018.”
The Texas County Justice Center houses the sheriff’s department, jail, three courtrooms, the county prosecuting attorney’s office, circuit court offices and other offices. The approximately $10 million project was made possible by voter approval in 2005 of two half-cent sales taxes –– one for construction and another for maintenance of the completed building. Construction began in 2006 and was finished in 2008. Another half-cent sales tax also affecting the Justice Center was already on the books from a vote in the 1980s.