Monday, March 15, 2010

How to save a quarter-million dollars

It's not often elected officials can save taxpayers more than a quarter-million dollars.

But with a unanimous roll call vote, that's what Elizabethtown Borough Council did earlier this month in voting to refinance the borough's debt. And just by lucky timing, interest rates were low and investors were hungry -- so council refinanced to an interest rate of about 3.3 percent, saving more than $265,000 because of the lower interest rate.

As the borough's financial adviser, Chris Gibbons of Concord Public Finance stated, it's just like refinancing the mortgage on your house to a lower interest rate.

The borough has authorized Gibbons to recommend refinancing if it will save taxpayers a minimum of $150,000. This time, Elizabethtown lucked out -- and I think I can speak for all of Borough Council that we're pleased.

4 comments:

  1. For more on this, see "Borough Refinances Debt At Lower Interest Rate" in the March 11 issue of The Elizabethtown Advocate.

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  2. Congrats. I'm interested in a little back story too... How much debt does the borough have? When/how did we incur it?

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  3. Ben -- The borough refinanced $6.435 million, which we originally incurred about six or seven years ago to finance the new sewage treatment plant. On a related side note: I had a tour of the treatment plant last summer, and it's a fascinating process.

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  4. I forgot to give credit where credit is due: Dan and The Elizabethtown Advocate did report on this issue and scooped me.

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