School System To Pursue Loans for Roof Project, Other Maintenance Work

The Stephens County School System is authorizing its newly re-instated Schools Building Authority to seek out loan packages of up to $4 million for school improvements.

At a called meeting on Monday, the Stephens County Board of Education unanimously authorized the resolution that gives the Stephens County Schools Building Authority permission to do that.

According to Stephens County School Superintendent Bryan Dorsey, the building authority is a vehicle that the school system can use to obtain long-term bond debt for building and maintenance work in the school system.

Dorsey said now that the building authority has been given the go-ahead, he will begin obtaining proposals for loans for the authority to consider.

“What happens next is we would solicit from the lending institution a finance package for $4 million and looking for the lowest interest rate we can find,” said Dorsey. “We would bring that to the Stephens County School Building Authority for consideration and approval on that. Should they then approve that funding source, we would then come back to the board, looking for approval on that roof project we have been talking about and we would get started on that.”

Dorsey said he feels the school system can obtain favorable interest rates.

He said the plan would be to use the Building Authority debt to reimburse the general fund for the work and then use a future E-SPLOST, if passed, to pay off the Building Authority debt.

Dorsey did say that he feels the general fund could cover the debt even if E-SPLOST were to not pass when it is up for renewal.

The first project the school system is looking at is roof repairs at numerous spots at the Stephens County High School campus, a $1.5 to $2 million project.

With the remainder of the funds, the school system would like to take care of other needed maintenance work.

To help on that front, Dorsey invited a company called ABM to Monday’s called meeting to present what it has found regarding possible projects in the school system that would pay for themselves through savings in energy costs.

ABM said it could put together a project of lighting retrofits, numerous water conservation and low-flow fixtures throughout the system, HVAC replacement at Toccoa Elementary, HVAC repairs at the middle school, ventilation upgrades, and HVAC preventative maintenance around the system that would pay for itself through a guaranteed energy cost savings to the system of $162,000 per year.

Dorsey said that yearly savings pretty much equals the remaining available debt the building authority would have while allowing the school system to get more work done for the same amount of money.

“With that savings, that is on our general fund side,” said Dorsey. “If we use our Building Authority and reimburse it, we can save that and move the costs to the Building Authority and then to E-SPLOST by way of the building authority.”

Dorsey also said using ABM’s guaranteed savings would make the debt more manageable to pay back through the general fund if E-SPLOST did not pass.

The Board of Education did not make a decision on ABM’s proposal Monday night.

Several years ago, the city of Toccoa looked at a similar proposal from a different company, but rejected it.

Meanwhile, Dorsey said that regarding the building authority loan process, it will likely take a couple of weeks to get feedback from lending institutions.