Fluvanna getting bonds for school

Fluvanna County will receive an estimated $6 million in interest-free bonds to help build the county’s new $74 million high school, part of an estimated $191 million in stimulus money that state officials plan to use for schools.

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine announced this week the awarding of $71.6 million in school construction bonds through federal stimulus money.

The no-interest bonds, established by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, are available to localities for school construction, renovation and land acquisition, according to the governor’s office.

Fluvanna will use the bonds to refinance higher interest interim bonds that it acquired until state literary fund bonds, for which the county had been approved, could be allocated. Those state funds have since been postponed as part of state budget cuts announced by Kaine.

“We’re pleased that we will receive the bonds because it will allow us to refinance some of the interim funding and save about $1 million in interest payments,” said G. Cabell Lawton IV, Fluvanna’s county administrator.

In December, county officials sold $67 million in bonds to help pay for the school. The sale took more than two months of negotiating a rocky bond market as its original bond sale date was only 10 days after the Sept. 15, 2008, tanking of the stock market, which sent investment bankers and credit markets into a lending deep freeze.

With the interim financing, the bonds announced by the governor and the December bond issue, the county now has all of its funding in place to build the new school, Lawton said. Officials hope to have the school open for students in August 2011.

The existing Fluvanna County High School was remodeled in 2002 to accommodate 1,000 students, but now serves close to 1,200, officials have said. The new school is designed to serve between 1,500 and 1,750 students with the potential to expand to 2,500.

The county plans to move middle-school students into the existing high school, move fourth- and fifth-graders into the middle school and leave kindergarten through third-grade students in the elementary school.

Other bonds issued through the stimulus funds are for one project each in Portsmouth, Lynchburg, Lexington and Richmond and Montgomery counties and two projects in Petersburg.

“Some of these projects have waited over a year for financing and I’m glad they will move forward with funding from the Recovery Act,” Kaine said. “I am certain that this funding will ease some of the need in these communities by creating jobs and improving learning environments for our children.”