MOULTRIE — The Colquitt County Commission heard a proposal earlier this month on how to pay for the approximately $26 million in renovations to the County Jail.

The jail renovation and construction project has been in the planning stages for months and Jim Ingram of Studio 8 Design was hired as the architect to design the project. In November, Colquitt County residents voted to use SPLOST money to help fund it.

In April, the commissioners were given an update on the project from Wilkes Evans, representing Allstate Construction, the company that the County has hired to manage the project. During that meeting they were given numbers to look at that included the projected costs of the housing building and the renovation of the existing kitchen.

At that time, the commissioners agreed to move forward with bidding out the jail renovation and construction project.

At the commission’s May 7 meeting, County Administrator Chas Cannon said county staff had been working on a loan from the U.S. Department of Agriculture that might allow the SPLOST money to go farther.

Linda Westberry, area specialist with USDA’s Rural Development, told the commission that they were still in the application process. The loan would be for 40 years at a 3% interest rate, she said.

“If you go through an authority, and I’m going off of what Worth County is doing, Worth County is going through their building authority that they developed two years ago,” she said.

She explained that the building authority would be Worth County’s borrower but its assured income would be the Worth County government.

“So, we’re going to use [Worth] County’s financials to make it an eligible project, which would be the same way with Colquitt County. What it does is to help you produce a revenue bond instead of a general obligation bond,” she said.

County Attorney Lester Castellow said that the County won’t qualify for the USDA loan until 90% of the construction on the project has been completed.

“So how do we get $26 million to build 90% of the construction in order to qualify for that? The only way we’re going to do it is a revenue bond,” he said.

Castellow said that he had talked with a lawyer at the South Georgia Governmental Services Authority and a bond lawyer who has done a lot of projects in this area.

The South Georgia Governmental Services Authority is a cooperation between the cities of Moultrie, Thomasville, Cairo and Camilla that, initially, had the purpose of building a fiberoptics infrastructure for the participating cities. This operated under CNS, which was consolidated in 2016 under the authority.

The South Georgia Governmental Services Authority is governed by an eight-member board made up of the city manager from each community and one city council member or mayor of each city.

Each of the participating cities now contracts with the authority to provide management and marketing services for the cities-owned broadband communications system, and it can also issue bonds.

“It is authorized to provide other governmental services and facilities, so we can go through them. Chas has already requested them to approve this,” said Castellow.

He also said that if it’s approved, it will take the next two or three months to go through the bond validation process.

“That’s the only way you’re gonna come up with $26 million to get you through the construction,” he said.

Based on the construction time, Cannon said that the bond would be for 24 months and the USDA will give a loan commitment letter to the authority so that the revenue bond will be approved.

“We’re not going to qualify for that revenue bond without that commitment letter from USDA,” added Castellow.

Westberry explained that the County would go to their interim lender, which was the South Georgia Governmental Services Authority, and borrow the 90% and the lender would get a letter from USDA that committed to paying off the lender once 90% of the construction was completed.

Castellow likened it to a construction loan on a house.

“It’s a process but I feel pretty good about it. It’s going to take a little time,” said Cannon.

Cannon said the loan might offer a solution for another funding gap the county is facing: Purchasing a significant upgrade to the emergency services’ radio system. He said that money could be rolled into the USDA loan.

Cannon said it was an expensive deal and the County would be paying for it for 40 years.

“But we’re gonna try to put all those payments into SPLOST. We got them in there at least a minimum amount for the new SPLOST that starts January of this year coming up,” he said.

When the sales tax that will begin in January nears its end, the county was already planning to ask voters for another, which if approved would start in 2032; that money was already part of the plan for paying for the jail renovations, but Cannon said the county could probably program more money into the 2032 SPLOST calculations to pay the loan back faster.