Bourbonnais school board OKs $3.8M bond sale

BOURBONNAIS – Facility upgrades to meet the state’s health and life safety standards are in the future for Bourbonnais Elementary School District 53.

The District 53 board approved a resolution Tuesday to issue more than $3.8 million in taxable general obligation school bonds to fund health/life safety code improvements at four of the district’s five schools.

Shabbona, Shepard and LeVasseur elementary schools and Bourbonnais Upper Grade Center are slated to receive the upgrades. Only Liberty Intermediate was not in need of any improvements.

The district will levy a direct annual tax to pay the principal and interest on the bonds.

“The intention is to keep the tax rate flat,” District 53 Superintendent Adam Ehrman said. “We could have bonded for more, but the intention was strongly that we are not going to go beyond our current tax rate. Keeping that flat not only impacted how many bonds we sold, but how we structured it as well.”

The district’s current tax rate is $3.21.

The estimate for the total cost of all the work needed at the four schools is more than $8 million.

The bonds will pay for altering and reconstructing the four buildings to meet codes, as well as purchasing and installing equipment for fire prevention and safety, energy conservation and school security purposes.

Items such as water heaters, mechanical control systems, fire doors and fire alarms at the schools are in need of replacement.

“A lot of that work will take us years to be able to do,” Ehrman said. “This is just preparing us for things.”

For example, the roof at Shepard will need to be replaced in the next two to five years.

The total amount of the bonds decreased by about $45,000 from what was presented during January’s bond hearing because of the removal of a project that would have included replacing old carpeting.

That project wasn’t going to be accepted by the state for a health/life safety amendment.

“We were arguing that the carpet was so frayed that we needed to replace it for a safety tripping hazard, and they didn’t really love it, so we let it go,” Ehrman said.

A series of three bonds are set to be issued, with maturity years of 2025, 2026 and 2027. The principal amounts of the bonds are $1,355,800, $1,416,400 and $1,032,800. Each has an interest rate of 5.25%.