Voices heard during Francesville water project public hearing

A public hearing was held for the proposed water project before a regular Francesville Town Council meeting on Wednesday, July 2. Public input on the matter shed light on several community questions and concerns. Before public comment was heard, updates to the numbers that were presented last month were given by Tyler Coffel from Baker Tilly. Coffel advised that the updated rate study is similar to the previous one, but some numbers have changed due to a change to the cost of issuance and rounding. He went on to explain that originally the town was in a pool program which has non-subsidized interest rates. In this instance, SRF would just get the loan themselves and loan it to communities. Now, however, the town is in a traditional program, which gives them an interest rate of 3.13% as opposed to the prior interest of 4.1%. The total project cost sits at $2,426,000 with proposed bonds coming in at $1,724,000 (previously $1,697,000). The OCRA grant is still secured at $700,000.