Jacksonville School District 117 authorizes issuing $15 million in bonds

By Gary Scott on June 22, 2017 at 9:58am

Board members of Jacksonville School District 117 had further discussions regarding the issuance of alternate bonds at last night’s meeting.

Specifically, the District 117 Board authorized the issuance of $15-million dollars in bonds to be used for construction within the district.

Superintendent Steve Ptacek goes over some of the discussion that took place during the committee of the whole meeting.

“Tonight they passed the first step necessary in selling the next stage of bonds to be able to do another school. So I asked the Board how they would like me to approach giving them the information so they can make a decision about which school to do next…we’re very fortunate to be in the position that we’re going to be able to do another elementary school next summer, and how they want me to approach preparing them to make that important decision of what school is next,” Ptacek explains.

While The board gave authorization for 15 million dollars of bonds, Ptacek says that 10 million dollars is more likely. He first explains where that 10 million dollar amount comes from.

“When we sold the bonds last time, we originally thought we were going to be able to bond, the a feasibility study, $24 million. And they had the authority to do $32 million, and it turned out with the feasibility study we could’ve done $37 million. So we didn’t have the board authorize enough to maximize a potential bond, a potential off sales tax revenue. This time, the thought is we want to sell $10 million in bonds, because if you sell $10 million or less in one year, you can get those bonds to be qualified, which potentially can get a better interest rate for the district,” says Ptacek.

Other items from last night’s meeting included the acceptance of district-wide plans and handbooks for each school in the district. District 117 will hold a meeting next Wednesday at 6 p.m. in the JHS Cafeteria to discuss the district-wide re-boundary process.