District saves more than half million with refinance

Jacksboro ISD refunded a series of bonds Wednesday which should amount to a savings of $665,000 for the district. The firm of Raymond James and Associates handled the transactions of $3.175 million in bonds refinanced with a true interest rate of 2.43 percent Superintendent Dwain Milam reported.

At Monday’s school board meeting, Milam said district staff had completed the S&P reaffirmation of JISD’s bond rating.

“We were a little worried about that at one point,” he said. “Right now, we’re rated as an A+ with a stable outlook and that has a big impact on interest rates as we do the refinancing. There were some concerns early on in two areas. They were worried that we had to go into fund balance a couple of years to cover our revenues and our expenditures. 

“We were able to show them where we were forecast for the current budget year and changes we made and the changes we have planned moving forward to cut costs. That satisfied them on that front.”

The other concern was the drop in appraised values. The most significant drop was from the Brazos Co-op Power Plant. 

“We worked a lot with the appraisal district and they were able to assure them that was a one-time adjustment,” Milam said. “They did not anticipate that to be a continual drop. That helped us out a lot.”

To read the complete article, see the Oct. 14 edition of the Herald-Gazette.