School gets good deal on bonds

New Hampton School Board members received a nice surprise — lower-than-estimated interest rates — on Monday when they sold $10 million in bonds for its upcoming school building project. Yet, it was an “expected surprise.”“We were pretty conservative when it came to interest rates,” Superintendent Jay Jurrens said, “but that’s what you want to be. If you’re going to miss, you want to miss on the low side and not the high side.”The bonds were issued to Northland Securities at a “true interest” rate of 2.926733 percent after the district received six bids that ranged from Northland’s to 3.121248 percent from a Memphis, Tenn., firm.They will be “delivered,” on June 1, which essentially means that will be the date that the school district will receive the money.Over the 20-year life of the bonds, New Hampton will pay a little more than $3.34 million in interest to Northland Securities. The high bid would have cost the district about $3.61 million in interest.For the complete story see the 5/5/2017 New Hampton Tribune.