CES office relocating

LISBON - The local office of the Cooperative Extension Service is being relocated to the new Columbiana County Government Services Building to help pay off the project's debt.

County Auditor Nancy Milliken said that adding the CES as a rent-paying tenant will provide enough extra money to ensure commissioners have sufficient revenue left in the county's general debt service account to make the construction bond payments on the new government services building.

Milliken's comments came following a meeting last week with commissioners to update them on efforts to put in place a financial package to pay for the construction of the building, which opened in April.

The 76,000-square-foot, two-story building houses the county Department of Job and Family Services, the Board of Elections, One-Stop agency (county unemployment agency) and the Veterans Services Commission.

Rent from the JFS and One-Stop, plus the money commissioners were saving from no longer have to rent space for Veterans Services, was supposed to cover about 80 percent of the annual bond construction payments. The elections board does not pay rent since it is a county agency.

The remaining 20 percent was to be paid with money from the county's general debt service account, which comes from 0.2-mills in property taxes commissioners are allowed by law to collect. The debt service money is used to fund debt payments on construction projects.

The debt service account generates about $300,000 per year, according to Chief Deputy County Auditor John Goempel, and $160,000 of that is currently obligated to meet existing debt payments, leaving $140,000 to cover any new construction debts.

"Anything beyond that we would be in trouble," he said.

County officials determined late last year the county would have difficulty affording its share of the debt because of the way the financing package was structured. The two construction bonds obtained to provide the up-front money to start the project were front-loaded and for shorter terms, which required higher bond repayments over the first 12 years.

Goempel said this required a higher share of money from debt service account beyond the $140,000 that remained uncommitted. "This would have killed us because the general obligation debt was going to require we put up more than we cold afford," he said.

Visit link:
CES office relocating