NOTE: The section of this report titled “Financing” has significantly changed, with further information and clarification, since original publication.
By MELINDA J. OVERSTREET
for Glasgow News 1
With site preparation now underway at the future location of a justice center for Barren County, discussions of project development board are mostly focused on details such as working with utilities on line relocation and/or protection; requirements of the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet for the necessary permit to have a new side street connecting off West Main Street, which is a state-maintained highway.
For example, the Glasgow Water Co. has requested replacement of a portion of a main sewer line that crosses the property because it’s made of clay and only a few feet deep, so the concern is that it could be damaged by heavy equipment during construction.
Circuit Judge John T. Alexander, vice chair of the PDB, said that because this would be an improvement to their line, he thought it would be fair to ask the GWC to cover part of the expense or contribute materials, for example.
“We’re members of the community; they’re members of the community. We don’t want to delay our project, but, at least as importantly, we don’t want to cause some kind of disruption of service to everybody that lives downstream,” he said. “So we’re all trying to do the right thing, and I think we’ll get there. It’s just a question of – I’d like to see if we can share the responsibility of it a little bit, at least give that a try.”
A plan was being worked out by the end of Wednesday’s regular PDB meeting for discussions along those lines to take place. Meanwhile, Tommy Gumm, whose company Alliance Corp. was hired for construction management, said they have been using something like a ramp system to avoid having the pipes bear the weight of the equipment.
As had been discussed at a previous meeting, the KYTC has requested that a pedestrian refuge island be constructed where the soon-to-be relocated portion of Ford Drive joins West Main Street at the site.
Both of these issues were requiring additional paperwork to be completed for and approved by the Kentucky Administrative Office of the Courts, and preliminary cost estimates were also among the items discussed, but they were both to some degree in flux, depending on what happens with GWC and other factors.
Similarly, American Engineers Inc. engineer Matt Allen reported that he is coordinating with South Central Rural Telecommunications Corp. to avoid damaging a main fiber optic line that crosses the property from West Main to West Front Street. Due to its shallow depth, he said, some pipe elevations had to be adjusted, for example.
Rich Alexander, the Barren County Bar Association’s representative on the board who also happens to be Glasgow’s city attorney, said he’s been working on the preparation of documents for two items that he expects to be before the Glasgow Common Council at its next meeting (Nov. 12, a day later than usual because of the Veterans Day holiday). One is the permanent closure of a portion of West Water Street on the site, while maintaining a temporary easement to access it during the construction phase. The other item is a temporary easement off West Main Street.
Financing
Chip Sutherland, managing director for public finance for Baird, a financial advising company, had said during the PDB’s Sept. 11 meeting that the original $3.7 million bond anticipation note for the project – a relatively temporary loan to meant to provide operating funds for getting the project started, including the property purchase, that would be paid off when the county issues bonds to cover the cost the entire project, including construction – would be coming due Dec. 1. His recommendation was to get a new BAN issued to cover the principal and roughly $300,000 interest on the first one, plus about $500,000 more to make sure there’s enough to cover expenses through around the first of March 2025, which is roughly the anticipated time frame for construction to begin.
He said he would work with the bond attorney to get a resolution prepared for this plan to move forward.
At its Oct. 15 regular meeting, the Barren County Fiscal Court approved a resolution authorizing and directing the Barren County Public Properties Corp. to issue its “first mortgage revenue bond anticipation note (judicial center project) Series 2024 in an approximate principal amount for $4,565,000.” The resolution summary states the purposes as to fully refund and retire the corporation’s first such BAN, Series 2022; to provide additional interim financing for the costs on the project; to authorize and direct the solicitation of proposals for the purchase of the new note; and to authorize various other connected actions.
Three representatives from Baird were present, including Michael Oldiges, who spoke to the fiscal court and explained that this new BAN would increase the timeframe by a year, buying the construction team a little more time, and, per the direction of the AOC, it would add $500,00 for other expenses.
“This is just a measure to make sure they’re still funded through [the time of] construction bids,” Oldiges said.
He added that once that resolution was approved, they would begin solicitation of banks the following day and allow two weeks, with a deadline for bids of Oct. 30. He said they aimed to close on the note Nov. 13 and pay off the original BAN at that time, which would be in plenty of time before it would mature Dec. 1.
Byrd pointed out that this would not hurt the county’s bonding capacity in any way, because these are fully reimbursable bonds.
The county, through this public properties corporation, is the owner of this property, just as it is for the current courthouse, and it will have a lease agreement for the AOC for its use. The actual funding for the construction project, though, is coming through the state government.
On Tuesday of this week, the Barren County Public Properties Corp., the board of directors for which is the Barren County Fiscal Court, had a special-called meeting for a related resolution that took less than two minutes.
Barren County Judge-Executive Jamie Bewley Byrd, who serves as chair of the public properties corporation and is also the chair of the PDB, read the agenda line, “Approve Public Properties Corporation Resolution authorizing the issuance of the Corporation’s First Mortgage Revenue Bond Anticipation.”
She told the other fiscal court members, “This is for the justice center bond, the bond that was put in place to get everything moving before the actual large project starts. Right now they’re doing sitework on the actual site. You can see dirt moving, which is exciting, and the big bond will be sold in the spring, once we get the cost of the bids back. This is just basically, it’s redoing that [first] bond, the bond that we’re going to get reimbursed for.”
This resolution was similar to the fiscal court resolution, with the same dollar amount and purposes, but with added language regarding the mortgage and the lease to the AOC, for example.
With only Magistrate Ronnie Stinson absent, the corporation vote was unanimous in favor of the resolution.
During Wednesday’s PBD meeting, Byrd said she had spoken with Chip Sutherland, managing director for public finance for Baird, a financial advising company. She reported that he had told her four banks had been interested and the one with the lowest interest rate wanted a variable rate, but Sutherland advised to go with a fixed rate.
“So everything came back good on that,” Byrd said.
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