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The January 14th, 2025 regular meeting of the St. Joseph County Council is in the books. For our first meeting with a new leadership team, I thought things went pretty smoothly. The most important event of the evening was the bipartisan passing of two ordinances to approve the bonds for the Alexander Rd. Highway Garage in Granger.
Very simply put, bonds are a way for government to borrow money for large projects. The federal government, state governments, cities, and counties all float bonds. Other public entities such as libraries, parks, and fire territories do as well. The bonds are sold to pension funds, individuals, mutual funds, and other organizations with a repayment date and interest rate established for each bond. They are repaid with tax dollars.
St. Joseph County's current and projected annual debt service payments divided by the net assessed value of all taxable property in the county is approximately .0164%. For most people this number doesn't have much meaning. Put directly, with our debt service payments being such a low percentage of the net assessed value of taxable property in the county, we can borrow the money for the Alexander Drive Highway Garage and wisely selected future projects without raising taxes. This is excellent news for our tax payers.
These particular bonds have a term (life until repayment of principle) of 7 years or less, and the maximum principle amount of the bonds will be $7,400,000. The interest rate will be between 4.5% and 5.5%, and the estimated total interest will be $1,839,750. Again, all this will be repaid without raising taxes.
For those of us living in the northeastern part of the county, this development has a significant impact, and there is some history. In the spring of 2023 the St. Joseph County Council approving over $1 million of American Rescue Plan money to start construction of a new, auxiliary highway garage in Granger off of Anderson Rd. and in conjunction with the building of the Anderson Rd. Park. The location, however, was a sticking point for many in the community. After a town hall type meeting to better understand the concerns citizens had, the commissioners and I began looking for a new location for the highway garage. From June through October we canvased the Granger area for a property and came up with a spot on Alexander Drive that is in an industrial area with only industrial traffic and on land that has a lower water table - the choice was a win-win.
The only negatives were that we had to wait until February, 2024 to announce the new location due to contractual issues. Construction was delayed. Tree clearing and other preliminary work was done in 2024. With Tuesday's passage of the ordinances to approve the Alexander Drive bonds, we can expect work to begin in the spring and the garage to be completed in 2025.
For this year's snow season, plowing and salting may still be less than we desire due to the distance the plows have to drive in getting to and back from the Riverside Garage in South Bend as they reload salt. Pray for low snow volume and look forward to the 2025-26 snow season. It is then that we will receive service from our new, centralized facility on Alexander Drive right here in Granger. .
Respectfully,
Dan
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