After a motion was passed at the January 10, 2005 city council meeting enabling Mayor Dexter McClendon to refinance the Camellia City’s 1993 and 1996 bonds, Greenville is looking at having money back as a result.

According to the motion, the bonds that were originally issued in 1993 and 1996 will be refunded to a lower interest rate in order to form what will be known as the 2005 bond issue.

The original interest rate, according to McClendon was 5.2 percent.

That will change slightly to 3.8 percent. Due to this change, the city of Greenville will be able to insert upwards of $360,000 into the budget.

&uot;We’ve been looking at doing this for probably for the last six months we started looking at it to see if there were any saving there. You try to get somewhere around 3% for your savings and as interested rates started to move up we went ahead and decided that we needed to do this now. We thought it would be around $325,000 but it ended up being around $360,000.&uot;

But, with the money comes a catch. It has to be spent on capital improvements and not placed into the general fund. But, the City of Greenville has a three-year timeline to spend it.

&uot;We’re looking at doing some work on City Hall,&uot; said McClendon. &uot;All of this money has to be spent on Capital Improvements and can’t be put into the general fund. We will look at projects such as the roof here, the roof at the Depot. We’ll also look at some things that the high school needs and talk to them. All of these savings will go into Capital Improvements with about $100,000 of it going to City Hall. I haven’t talked to anyone from the board yet, we just found out about this and with Dr. Reed leaving I thought we would just wait. We are not in any hurry, we don’t have to spend this money for three years, so I don’t see any hurry. And I thought that we would wait until the new superintendent was in place. I have talked with Dr. Murphy in passing that there might be some possibilities here and things that they might be interested in. But nothing official, that will be determined by the new superintendent and the board.&uot;

The city of Greenville also will receive money from the refunding of the bond issue down the road, so to speak.

&uot;It’s great saving for us,&uot; said McClendon. &uot;Anytime we can get 360 and not change your payments or anything it’s good. It’s like refinancing your house, it was a smart move to make and we went ahead and pulled the trigger and got this thing done.&uot;

McClendon is also optimistic about the success of the new bond and it’s endurance within the budget.

&uot;You don’t know what interest rates are going to do,&uot; said McClendon. &uot;I don’t anticipate this happening for a long time.&uot;