Loan Changes Discussed
By PJ Martin
Editor
The Herald-News
The Edmonton – Metcalfe Industrial Development Authority (IDA) held a special called meeting on Tuesday, May 20th with a quorum present. All were in attendance except Donna Caffee.
The minutes from the regular meeting on April 21st were approved with no changes. The minutes from the May 5th special called meeting were then passed with a vote of 3 to 1. The no vote was cast by Jerry Garmon with no discussion requested.
Secretary Alley Bragg presented the financials for the period of April 21st to May 20th. “We added $2.32 of interest. Um, May 5th Pennington Stave Company made their payment of $10,941 90, and then we’re gonna pay the ESB loan back out of $10,941 90, and that’s gonna leave $21,640.37.”
A motion was made to accept the treasurer’s report and approved.
Bylaws
Chairperson Lisa Boswell asked about the proposed bylaws. “When we left the last meeting, I said, take them home, look them over, if there was anything that you wanted to change. Now, he (Attorney Brian Pack) had given us some things to take out that were redundant…Was there anything else in there?”
No one offered any comments or changes so Boswell stated, “All right, so I will type them up and we can address that at the next meeting. Actually, I’ll probably just send it out in email.”
Loans
“The next item was my meeting with ESB. All right, so I met with David (Thompson), and I asked him about if we refinance our loan, and if we refinance our interest rate on commercial real estate…We’re currently paying 5.75% but it would go up to 7.5% and our payment currently to ESB is actually $6,866.79.”
It was stated that the request from Chad Pennington of PSC was to possibly extend the loan out, but with interest that much higher, it would be a bad choice to refinance the loan.
Mayor Doug Smith made a suggestion. “If the payment is $4,000 different, what about Chad just making the payment required to make the bank payment? Maybe the Industrial Board keeps $1,000 and that gives him a $3,000 break?”
Boswell added, “Unfortunately, Chad didn’t tell us how long he needs to do this for when he was here. So, I don’t know if it’s a year, if it’s the life of the loan, but if it’s a year, that might be alright.”
The other thing is, remember, we agreed to roll the entire payment over to the loan, because we cannot move forward until we get out from under it and that’s why we wanted to roll the entire payment over so we’re still going to be kind of stuck. Well, the RDAPP money is making the payment go pretty good, isn’t it?” explained Boswell.
Smith noted that the RDAPP money was never meant to alleviate debt. It was meant to be used to bring industry to the area so they (TVA) could sell electricity. “That’s their whole intent.”
Smith suggested that the payment change could be done for 6 months at a time.
Boswell noted that the agenda only listed her presenting the report from ESB and nothing else. Since it was a special called meeting, nothing could be added that wasn’t on the agenda; therefore, it could not be voted on until the next meeting. Boswell asked Smith to tell Chad Pennington to contact her.
With no other items on the agenda, the meeting adjourned. The next meeting is scheduled for Monday, June 16, 2025, at 2 p.m. at Edmonton City Hall.
