The Cobb Board of Commissioners on Tuesday authorized county budget officials to begin the process of taking out short-term tax-anticipation notes (TANs) that would be repaid later this year.
By a 5-0 vote the commission approved a measure that would obtain $90 million in TANs, which are short-term loans used to plug county finances and spending between budget years. The current fiscal year 2018 (with a general fund budget of $405 million) ends at the end of the September.
Since the Cobb tax digest is revealed and millage rate is set in July, the county doesn’t begin collecting property taxes until a new fiscal year is underway. Those bills are mailed out in October. The county tax assessor’s office began mailing out assessment values to residential and commercial property owners last month.
According to a background sheet from Tuesday’s meeting agenda, Cobb has been issuing TANs since the late 1980s, a practice that “provides the needed liquidity at attractive borrowing rates to the County.”
(The Cobb County School District also occasionally seeks out TANs, and recently obtained $40 million in short-term loans for construction purposes.)
The TANs are general obligation bonds and interest is usually tax-exempt. Last year Cobb borrowed $60 million in TANs, but the amount has gone up because of a projected fiscal year 2019 deficit of at least $30 million.
The county budget office will begin a competitive bidding process for the TANs in May and present a low bid to the commissioners for approval before any loans would be obtained.
The TANS would have to be repaid by the end of November.
Related stories
Also Tuesday, East Cobb resident Andy Smith was formally announced as the newest member of the Cobb Planning Commission, which advises the commissioners on zoning issues.
He is the appointee of District 2 commissioner Bob Ott and will serve at his first meeting in May.
Smith succeeds Mike Terry, who retired after last week’s planning commission meeting. Terry was appointed when Ott first took office in 2009. Ott, a former member of the planning commission, said Terry did “a yeoman’s job” during his long tenure.
Terry was also the board’s chairman. Judy Williams of Northeast Cobb, appointed by District 3 commissioner JoAnn Birrell, will assume duties as the new chairwoman next month.
In other business Tuesday, the commissioners formalized the spending of $47,000 for emergency repairs for a sinkhole on Woodlawn Drive (previous East Cobb News post here) and approved a change-order for a $332,781 savings in its final contract with C.W. Matthews for a roundabout project in front of Pope High School.
The final cost for the project, which was completed right before the start of the school year, comes to $3,053 million.
Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click the button below to sign up, and you’re good to go!
