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About The Commerce news. (Commerce, Ga.) 1???-current | View Entire Issue (May 4, 2016)
Vol. 140 No. 11 24 Pages 2 Sections Wednesday MAY 4,2016 www.CommerceNewsTODAY.com 50 Cents COVERING THE COMMERCE AREA SINCE 1875 Red Cross blood drive set Tuesday The American Red Cross will hold a blood drive Tues day May 10, from noon to 6:00 p.m. in the family fellow ship center of the First Baptist Church of Com merce. The church is located at 1345 South Broad Street, Com merce. The Red Cross provides blood services to local hos pitals, including Northridge Medical Center and the Ath ens, Gainesville and Atlanta area hospitals. Participants on Tuesday will receive a coupon for a free Chick fil-A sandwich at the Banks Crossing restaurant. To make an appointment, visit redcrossblood.org and enter sponsor code “coco” or call 1-800-733-2767. All donors must bring a photo ID. Farmers' market to relocate The 2016 version of the Commerce Farmers’ market will open at a new location on Saturday, May. 28. The market, traditionally held at the parking lot across South Elm Street from Spen cer Park, will move to the parking lot on North Elm Street near South State Bank and Pinnacle Bank. “It’s larger, wider and more visible and has a little bit of shade,” Downtown Devel opment Authority executive director Natalie Thomas told the DDA last week. It has another advantage, she added — a stream of cus tomers going to both those banks who will go right by the farmers’ market. To date, Thomas said, she has three vendors who paid the $25 fee to operate the whole summer, and three more she expects to come on board. INDEX Church News 5B Classified Ads 8-9B Crime News 6-7A Obituaries 6-7B Opinion 4A School 11A Sports 1-4B Social News... 8-1OA MAILING LABEL BELOW City schools to save S830K with refinancing of bonds The Commerce Board of Education took action last week that will cut its debt payments by $830,000 over the next 12 years. The board voted in a called meeting to authorize the refinancing of almost $12 million in 2009 bonds, cutting its interest rate from 4.4 percent to 1.69 percent and saving $830,803 over the 12 years remaining on the bonds. Two factors helped make that pos sible, explained Bryan Huskey of Mer chant Capital, the bond underwriter. The first was a new AA+ bond rat ing from Standard & Poors, based on the system’s recent financial recovery; the other was historically low bond prices. “You will see $68,000 to $78,000 savings ayear,” Huskey told the board. “Market timing is part luck and part planning.” The result is an 8.8-percent reduc tion in interest expense over the course of the bonds, well over the three-percent threshold underwriters use to consider whether savings are sufficient to warrant refinancing. Superintendent Joy Tolbert called the 1.69percent rate “awesome and absolutely wonderful.” Tread Syfan of the Stewart, Melvin & Frost law firm led the board through the legal process. “We were really lucky to get the mar ket timing, and the credit rating helped as well,” he told the board. The bonds will be validated in a Superior Court hearing May 20. Pro ceeds from the sale of the bonds will go into an escrow account with Regions Bank and will be used to pay off the 2009 bonds in 2019. “When you get to the date when you can redeem the bonds, the money will be in the bank and the bonds will go away” Syfan explained. The 2016 bonds ($8.6 million principal) were structured so that the school system paid interest-only until 2021, when the system’s 2007 bonds ($5.1 million principal) are paid off. The 2016 bonds will reduce the system’s annual debt costs with out extending the length of debt service. The system will pay 1.82 percent of the bond par in costs, or $154,089. The largest part of that, $63,450, will go to Merchant Capital. Personnel Moves In other business at the called meet ing, following a closed session, the board made the following personnel moves: New hires: Cara Lindsey principal, Commerce Elementary School; Kalie Thomas, special education teacher, Commerce Middle School; Roxanne Carroll, sixth-grade reading and writ ing teacher; Macie Grant Carreno, Spanish teacher; Cassie Dobson, spe cial education teacher at CMS; Josh Rider, business education teacher at CMS; Valerie Lord and Jeff Pearce, special education paraprofessionals; and Allison Parker, fifth-grade English/ language arts teacher. Transfer: Lori Martin from fifth-grade English/language arts to second grade teacher. Resignations: Stacy Peters, sec ond-grade teacher; Julie Russell, math teacher at Commerce High School; and Ashley Norwood, paraprofession- al at Commerce Primary School. Leave of absence: Mandy Lund, maternity leave Aug. 8-Sept. 6. aheXS ahead Early voting under way Early voting for the May 24 primaries is under way and will continue through May 20 at the Jackson County Board of Elections and Voter Registration Office at 441 Gordon Street, Jefferson. Beverly Keen cast one of the first votes on Monday. Voters should remember that the location for early voting has been changed. Gordon Street is well marked with signs leading voters to the Gordon Street Center and the office of voter registration. Early voting will also be available at the Commerce Recreation Department office on Carson Street the week of May 16-20. Voting takes place 8-5. Power play City finds buyer for 1 MW excess power Commerce appears to have found a buyer for up to one megawatt of its excess electricity. The council voted in a called meeting Monday night to enter an eight-year con tract with the Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia (MEAG) to provide power to an undisclosed customer starting Jan. 1,2017. The move will generate $20,000 a year for the city. As important, it utilizes elec tricity the city is under contract to pur chase but has not needed. “We have been talking about opportu nities to mitigate our risks with Plant Vog- tle coming on line and coming up with a strategy to solve that problem,” Mayor Clark Hill reminded the city council. Interim city manager James Wascher said, “MEAG was short-listed to bid for 22 MW of power for a project in South Georgia. They came to all the cities with excess power and asked if they would like to submit a bid.” Wascher said the city already has excess of more than 1 MW of power, but is obligated to accept an additional 5 MW once the first new nuclear unit comes on line at Plant Vogtle in 2018 or 2019 — and another 1 MW when the second unit at Vogtle comes on line. Finding customers for that new electricity is a major concern for city officials. Washer said excess power is currently selling for 2.9 cents per kilowatt hour (KWH). “I anticipate an average over the next eight years of being around 3.2 cents,” he said. “That would net us about $20,000 annually. A lot of forces really came together and knocked the bottom out of the price of electricity.” Should Commerce’s demand for power grow, the city will be able to replace the 1 MW when Vogtle comes on line. And while the additional power from Votgle will not come on line until 2018 or 2019, Wascher reminded the council that the city’s debt service payments for its purchase of power start in 2017. MEAG will administer the power sale, which involves a number of other cities as well as Commerce. Meanwhile, the city will continue to seek buyers for the additional power. According to Hill, it has a commitment for the purchase of 1 MW out of the total of 6 MW it will eventually get from Vogtle. Across Georgia, consumers can expect to see their costs for electricity increasing as their power providers begin passing along costs for debt service relat ed to the Vogtle project. The costs will vary according to the electric provider and how much debt it incurred. Benton closure not on Jackson BOE agenda Closing Benton Elementary School won’t be on the Jack- son County Board of Educa tion’s agenda this month. A stakeholder meeting will be held later in May to address the issue, according to superinten dent April Howard. While it may not be on the BOE’s official agenda, at least 10 West Jackson parents plan to attend the May 5 work ses sion. Five plan to speak on the issue at the May 9 meeting. “We want the discussion brought back up,” said parent Libby Christiansen. Christiansen and two other parents made a strong push at last month’s BOE meeting that Education Local Option Sales Tax be used to add more West Jackson classrooms. The parents also demand ed the merging of Benton with East Jackson and South Jack- son. Benton needs over $2 mil lion in renovations, money that the parents argued could be used to add classrooms and ease overcrowding in the west side. Most of system’s recent enrollment growth has been on the west side. West Jackson schools have added 416 more students since 2007, versus 10 more students in East Jackson schools. But Christiansen said this is not an east side/west side issue. Rather, the merging of the schools would free up resources for facilities and operating expenses throughout the system. Following last month’s BOE meeting, chairman Michael Cronic indicated that he thought the issue of closing Benton should be brought up again. The BOE held hearings last year on the issue, but never took a vote after an outcry by the East Jackson community to keep the historic school open. The closing of Benton would save the system money but it still might not be enough to cover other facilities expenses. The new ELOST is expected to generate $27 million for the system between 2017-22. That won’t be enough to pay on the system’s $50 million bond debt, build a new West Jackson school and make other need ed facilities upgrades.
