02 02 21 Minutes Called Meeting

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February 2, 2021
Page 2 of 3

new funding plan being recommended is to have the School Building Phases | and II completed
concurrently that would utilize the $1,000,000 that has already been guaranteed from the sales
tax, school savings once students enter that building of $780,000+ annually, which is the
$700,000 savings that was already set by the School Board plus 25% of the extra revenue the
School Board is receiving from the increase in the County sales tax that the county voters voted
for and City will use $45,000 annually coming from the school debt service fund that will help to
pay that debt down quicker. That comfortably provides the City with the funding for $40,000,000
to complete both schools at one time and both schools being slated to meet the School Board’s
timeframe of opening Fall of 2023. This also incorporates the maintenance on existing School
properties to be paid by Athens City Schools over the next three years, or until students are
moved into the new school buildings, utilizing CARES Act and other funds. These are and will be
publicly owned buildings and will be the responsibility, as they are today, of the taxpayers. The
CARES Act is one-time money that is coming in that can be appropriated and used for these
repairs and the Schools have provided the City Council with a list of those improvements
including timelines and dollar amounts that is to be accomplished. This addresses taking care of
the immediate and future needs of those three-existing building — Ingleside, North City, and
Westside. The other needs of the City that have been identified and discussed with the City
Council are the street improvements of roughly $3,000,000 in the City Park neighborhood to
handle the increase of traffic. It has been stated and acknowledged that those improvements
will not be complete by the time the schools open but tremendous progress will have been made
at that time. The City will be roughly six months to a year out from completing those traffic
improvements to help mitigate those people living there, people dropping their kids off, and the
employees of the school system that need to get in and out of that neighborhood as well. The
other items that were discussed for the City’s capital needs are a new or rehabilitated Animal
Shelter, a rehabilitated Public Works building, rehabilitation of City Hall, and a new fire training
ground that will go to benefit the entire county. Those will be appropriately $10,000,000 in
capital projects improvements for all those needs. So, to fund the entire project and the City’s
needs in the next four years, we are looking for a total single property tax increase, instead of a
double increase, and not $.20, but less than $.10. That would bring our tax rate, which was
$1.3628, which because of evaluation was lowered by nearly a dime to $1.2676, we project a
fiscal year 2022 property tax rate of $1.36. With the hiring of Cooperative Strategies we saw a
project that was hitting on 197,000 square foot, at times was $57,000,000+ and we were able to
appropriately size the building and make sure it meets the programming needs of the School
Board which saved our taxpayers roughly $8,000,000 off the project about two years ago. The
savings agreement that has been put in place between the School Board and City of Athens also
brings in savings to our taxpayers that makes this project happen. That over the projected 40-
year life of this loan is in the neighborhood of $32,000,000 that is not coming out of our
taxpayers’ pockets. This is the lowest loan rate, 2.125% from USDA in history. The further savings
from the construction bid came in even lower than our estimates and projections at just less than
$40,000,000. This project has come together over the last four years as a real team-based
approach with the City Council, School Board, with the chief staff of those two bodies working
together, talking together, and meeting frequently and sometimes we butted heads, sometimes
we didn’t see eye-to-eye but we kept working together and because of that Mayor Perkinson has
been deeply involved and sat at that table for many of those discussions, Chairman Mike Bevins
was also at the table, the director of schools Dr. Melanie Miller and now Robert Greene, and of
course our own director of finance Mike Keith crunching the numbers over and over to make
sure we could do this, that it was feasible, what was the overall impact to our entire city, to our
citizens, and to our businesses. This team approach and what it has taken even behind the scenes
to get us to this point is nothing other than the Friendly City being blessed beyond measure. We
sit here with this resolution before the City Council to meet all of the great and long-time coming
needs of this City in one move at one time.