The Gray County Commissioners Court met for a regularly-scheduled meeting on Monday morning. Commissioners Logan Hudson and Jeff Haley were absent for the meeting.
During the meeting, the Commissioners received a presentation from Insurica about their health insurance policy renewal.
The cost to add mental health to the policy was $15/employee per month and will cover mental health, nervousness, learning disabilities, substance/drug use.
The Commissioners also approved the sale of “Gray County, Texas, Lease Revenue Refunding Bonds, Series 2021 (Clarendon College District Project)”, including the adoption of an order authorizing the issuance of such bonds and establishing procedures and delegating authority for the sale and delivery of such bonds
Jason Hughes of Hilltop Securities gave a presentation on behalf of Clarendon College regarding those bonds.
“Interest rates are as such that we can refund those bonds,” Hughes said. “You issued those back in 2009. Interest rates are about 4.875 percent to five percent. We can refund those down to maybe even two percent. It’s just like you would refund or refinance your home mortgage. All we are doing is taking the high interest rate and turn it into a lower interest rate to lower the payments.”
The approval the college needed is called a parameter bond order.
“Two ways we can sell bonds,” Hughes said. “We can sell refunding bonds, come back to your meeting and get your approval. The only bad thing about that is we have to schedule the bond around your meeting. If you pre-approve this through the parameter bond order, we can sell these bonds at any point as long as we meet all of these parameters. So it gives us flexibility.”
The bonds were initially issued for the construction of the second and third buildings on the campus.
“The County would issue the bonds and the college would pay back the bonds as a lease-purchase option,” Clarendon College President Tex Buckhalts said.
Porter added this is a common thing for cities and counties to do.
The Commissioners approved the following items:
• Accept County Treasurer’s Monthly Report
• Accept County Clerk’s Monthly Report
• Minutes of the Previous Meetings.
• Pay Bills as Approved by the County Auditor
• Approval of Bond for Heather Swafford in the County Treasurer’s Office
• Request for Proposals Format and Posting for Increased County Broadband Coverage through the ARPA Funds
• Canvas of Returns for the State Constitutional Amendment Election of November 2, 2021
