Potential Lakewood SSA Bond Refinancing?

Six years ago when I was the chairman of the Planning Commission Lakewood Homes presented a proposal for building 800 homes in the area where they currently exist. We insisted (I was not Mayor then) on a variety of things that I concurred with, the two commercial parcels, the extension of the Cedar Lake Road, park set asides, and the impact fee structures. I won't go into the tactical reasons why going ahead with Lakewood at that time was important to the village, (that's a whole other post). Eventually the decision was made that to achieve the major objectives with SSA financing. The SSA is basically an addition to your tax bill to pay off bonds that were floated for your specific neighborhood, village etc. I won't go into the way SSA's can potentially help buyers get more home for less etc here (also another blog post as well). By the way not one trustee who voted yes on Lakewood is still on the Village Board.

Now fast forward 5 years later, Lakewood is built out, Fremont Township's assessments are some of the highest around, and the SSA is tacked on. You get high tax bills.

I have been working with some Lakewood residents who have contacted me about some issues specific to their homes and purchases, so it has led me to doing some global thinking about how we can lighten the load for the Lakewood Homeowners with the SSA's currently in place.

Speaking with the company that handles our bonds, Speer Financial, they were of the opinion that currently there is the ability to "refinance" the existing bonds. While not going into the obscure technical details we can reduce the interest rate by almost two points. At the moment with some quick calculations this can reduce the SSA total by $3.6 million over the life of the SSA.

Obviously a potential saving to the residents of Lakewood of any amount on their tax bills would be a positive. I am not sure how much impact this would be on the tax bill but we are going to find out.

I directed the Village Board Finance Committee chaired by Trustee Sherry Perkowitz and with Vice Chair Trustee Brian Brubaker to look into this and report back to the board as quickly as they can to see if this is feasible and firm up the process so we can act to cut the total owed and the rate.