HELENA — Friday afternoon, the Helena Public Schools Board of Trustees voted to approve Dick Anderson Construction as the general contractor for the new Helena High School.
This was made possible by the passage of a $240 million high school bond to build a new Helena High and renovate Capital High, and a $43 million elementary bond for a new Kessler school, but how do these bonds impact taxpayers in our community?
“A bond is kind of like an individual would think about it if they were building a home, they would go out a get a loan, so a bond really is a promise to repay, in our case, the underwriters or investors in the bond,” Bridget Ekstrom, the managing director of public finance at D.A. Davidson, said.
The district sold off over half of the bonds in November in half an hour.
Helena Public Schools superintendent Rex Weltz said, “It is incredible interest, and we are very fortunate and thankful for that, on the national side and local side, so the interest was abroad.”
The district was able to lock in an interest at around point five percent lower than what was advertised to voters in September.
Ekstrom said, “So that will be their actual tax bill savings.”
That means residents' property taxes will increase by less than expected. The impact will be $23.70 per $100,000 in taxable property value.
If we look at a $200,000 home, it will pay around $100 compared to a predicted $147. For a $400,000 home, they will pay about $200 compared to the initial $294, and for an $800,000 home, they will pay around $530 rather than $719.
The next series of bond issuances will be in summer 2027 and summer 2028, and the district feels that Helena could see similar rates.
“That’s why we feel like, well, at least locked in savings for a pretty big chunk, so even if the rate did trend up a little bit, we still think we are going to be in a favorable range because we were conservative before,” Ekstrom said.
The district plans to run three high school 30-year bond series and two 20-year bond series for the elementary school projects, with previous bonds reaching maturity soon.
Ekstrom said, “We tried to make it so that it factored in that elementary district taxpayers paying on those other prior bonds.
The district says that as the bond money is spent, contractors are selected, and projects move forward, they will be transparent with the community.
“We worked really hard to communicate with our public, and that’s not going to change,” Weltz said. “Quite frankly, when we were successful when the bonds passed, it was a desire of ours from the district and mine that we didn’t ask for support and then move on, but we ask for support, we are successful, and now continuing that same outreach.”
Next up, the board will be approving general contractors for Kessler and Capital, so dirt can start moving by summer.
