By Shelby Stewart
Staff Writer
During the regular meeting on Monday night, the Brandon board of Education unanimously approved a school bond loan refunding resolution.
“We had some information a couple weeks ago that was to our benefit to explore not only refunding the school bond loan fund, but to refund a portion of the 2016 refunder, which was originally the 2006 bond,” said Jan Meek, executive director of business services at Brandon Schools.
The school district is planning to go out for another bond within the next year, and the refunding of the current bond fund means that another bond can be sought without a tax increase.
“By doing this, we can increase our bonding capacity a little over $5 million, still within a no increase, so that’s good news,” said Meek. “There’s really no downside to doing this. Now our bond issue is going to be not to exceed $53 million, we think it’s going to be a little less than that.”
Since 2016, rules have changed about how often they can refinance the bond loans since interest rates have dropped in the last few years.
“We’re looking at a savings over the last several years, over $10 million for the tax payers,” she said. “This particular one, we’re saving about $2.2 million. This is all about saving tax-payer money.”