MOULTRIE — Nailing down the financing for the $24.4 million jail renovation and construction project hasn’t been an easy task for the Colquitt County government.

In County Administrator Chas Cannon’s briefs to the board during a recent work session, he said that they had anticipated using a USDA loan but after nearly a year of paperwork, there hasn’t been good progress on it, so he started looking at other options about a month ago.

“The solution we think we have, if we’re going to move forward on it and what I recommend, is a revenue bond through the South Georgia Governmental Services Authority,” he said.

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 fiber optics 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’ broadband communications system and it can also issue bonds.

Cannon went on to say that it had been mentioned in a previous meeting but it’s kind of a different route to get to the same solution.“But it’s not through USDA. It’s actually simpler than going through USDA,” he said.

Trey Monroe of Stifel Investment Services was introduced and he said, “Chas reached out to us to talk about how we can get the jail financing done.”

He said that Stifel Investment Services has a broad network of investors who buy bonds for financing jail projects. He showed the commissioners a list of places in the US where the company had helped finance jails and public safety facilities including a handful in Georgia over the past couple of years.

Monroe then showed the commission some sample financing scenarios that include 20-, 30- and 40-year plans.

“So this will take us, to deliver money to the county … have money in the bank to spend on construction, we estimate 45 to 60 days,” he said.

Monroe said the county could borrow the entire $24.4 million or it could use some of the funds that are already available and borrow less. Also, typically, the payments are made every six months, he said, but the plan could be structured where the county’s first payment was deferred as far out as 24 months.

“I think the solution that y’all have identified works perfectly. We’ve received lots and lots of projects, county projects that are funded through local authorities,” he said.

County Attorney Lester Castellow asked Monroe to talk about the pre-payment option and he said that somewhere between seven and 10 years into it, the county would have the option to just write a check and get rid of the bond, if they’ve collected enough revenue to do so.

“My level of comfort is much better now than it was 40 days ago. I feel better in terms of proceeding,” said Cannon.

He said that they feel comfortable with a 20-year revenue bond because they’ve already got a buffer in the current SPLOST to take them into the start of the new SPLOST. He said that they already have $2.5 million programmed into the new SPLOST for the jail and that they added in about $3.8 million in county payments for a total of around $6 million.

“Based on what we’re seeing SPLOST is increasing about 4% a year. We think we can pay this off in second SPLOST. … Two SPLOSTs from now. Assuming, they get passed by the voters,” Cannon said.

Residents of Colquitt County voted to continue SPLOST in November of last year, starting at the first of next year and expiring in 2030. It passed with 1,290 votes in favor versus 367 opposed.

Castellow said that before the process can start, the county needs to get the South Georgia Governmental Services Authority board’s approval of the revenue bond and it doesn’t meet again until Sept. 5.

Monroe said that they could probably go ahead and get started with the paperwork on their end in advance of the authority’s board meeting.

Cannon said that Monroe would come back and walk the commissioners through the final bond issue and once that process was completed they would get a chance to look at it again and then proceed forward from there.

Commissioner Marc DeMott made a motion to proceed with negotiating on the new financing proposal, Commissioner Johnny Hardin seconded it and the motion passed.

In June, the commission approved the jail renovation and construction contract with Allstate Constructions Group/Barber Contracting JV, LLC, which guaranteed that the maximum price of the project is $24,445,488.