Some Hamilton County commissioners are questioning the $260 million school bond they recently approved, which is expected to close later this week.
“I don’t know that anyone really fully understood what we were doing,” Commissioner David Sharpe, D-Red Bank, told WGOW-FM 102.3 on Thursday morning about the impact of the largest bond in the county’s history.
The day before, Lee Brouner, the county’s finance manager, told commissioners the county would be unable to return to the bond market for another four to five years, which surprised some.
After Wednesday’s commission meeting, Sharpe said he met with county Mayor Weston Wamp and the county finance staff and learned that the county doesn’t yet know how a little more than $4 million in debt payments will be covered next year.
“The commission was asked to vote for the bond issue while blindfolded,” Sharpe said in a statement Monday. “We were not told of the county’s current $4.2 million shortfall relative to making bond payments… Having this kind of critical information would have likely changed the tenor of the conversation around this issue, if not the outcome of the vote.”