by Logan Gruber
operations@thenewsleaders.com
The City of St. Joseph’s bond rating, which has been at an A+ for the past four years, was raised to an AA- for 2015. This increase in bond rating allows the city to sell bonds at a lower interest rate.
The increase is due to the increased financial health of the city. The rating is issued by Standard and Poor.
The city also issued $2.64 million in bonds, which were purchased by Northland Securities; $1.87 million will be used to help purchase Colt’s Academy, along with $506,000 in cash. The remaining $770,000 in bonds will be used to pay for equipment purchases and improvements in the city that have already been approved, including the Northland and Clinton Village neighborhood improvements.
Workers from C and L excavating, a subcontractor for Knife River, were hard at it placing storm-sewer pipes on Tuesday afternoon in Clinton Village. Clinton Village, along with the Northland area, will see roadwork done over the summer. Most of the work will consist of edge-milling and overlaying with 1.5-inch of bituminous. This basically means they will grind out a 6-foot-wide section of each lane of traffic to approximately 1-inch deep and fill it in with new material. Some of the work will also require the construction crews to completely dig out all of the asphalt and replace it from the ground up, which is more intensive and is done if the road is in particularly bad shape. Construction should end in October of this year.
