At Tuesday's Davidson County, N.C., Board of Commissioner's meeting, the county moved forward with discussions on potential bond packages for capital needs.
In May, the board approved paying Susan Bulluck of Bulluck & Co./AmRuss Ventures of Wilmington $18,000 to organize and develop bond packages and create a survey to gauge the public's opinion on said packages.
Bulluck, who gave a presentation Tuesday, said she interviewed approximately 30 individuals representing county management staff, school system officials and management and members of the county's tourism organizations and their operatives. The consultant essentially inquired about future needs of these stakeholders and put price tags on them.
She, along with Assistant County Manager Casey Smith, presented three main potential bond packages — a school infrastructure bond package that costs $33.7 million, a parks and recreation bond package that costs $7.9 million and a sports complex bond package that costs $40 million.
Bulluck and Smith also showed an "all other projects" package worth $23.2 million, which comprised an agricultural center, Hughes Park Multi-Sports Center, sewer expansion and public land acquisition. But it was noted that these projects may be outside the scope of the fall 2018 bond program.
The total combined bond amount of school infrastructure, parks and recreation and a sports complex would be approximately $81.6 million.
As an example of costs for taxpayers, an $81.6 million bond would raise the property tax rate by 5 cents per $100 property value. So a person with a property value of $150,000 would see their taxes increase by about $75 per year.
A $41.6 million bond, which would included the school infrastructure and parks and recreation, but not the sports complex, would raise the property tax rate by 2 cents per $100 property value. So a person with a property value of $150,000 would see their taxes increase by about $35 per year.
Smith estimated the bond payback at 4 percent interest over 20 years. But he noted that the county won't know the true rate until it goes to the market and sells it.
The county has not yet determined how much the bond will be or what will be included. The presentation only included suggestions of how potential bond packages may look.
The next move for the commissioners would be to select how to exactly package the bond items for a county residents survey. Bulluck would organize a phone survey for the end of January and beginning of February. The survey would be a questionnaire sent to 500 randomly selected registered voters who vote regularly. There will also be an online pool for electronic surveying.
The survey is intended to determine how the public feels about certain projects, which may help predict the success of them passing in a referendum during the November 2018 ballot.
"We'll design a survey that gets at the heart of it," Smith said. "How do you feel about these school projects? How do you feel about a sports complex? And if it comes back that one or any of those don't rate very well, we may have to have a conversation with the board about eliminating that off the list of what goes on the actual bond."
The last bond to pass in Davidson County was a 2005 general obligation bond that totaled $71 million for schools and Davidson County County Community College. It passed with 66 percent. Bulluck worked with the 2005 school bond issue and came back with the monetary capacity and that it would pass with 2/3 vote through her analysis. She was within 1 percent of the actual referendum vote.
For the Dec. 12 meeting, the board asked Smith to come up with a more solidified list of what the packages may look like and the individual projects within them.
"The (commissioners) had a couple of projects on the "other" list that I think they had interest in moving to the phone survey," Smith said. "So I'll scrap the ones — now that I've gotten direction from the board — that I think we're not going to do and move them off the table."
