County using stimulus money on 2008 failed bond issue projects
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
March 10, 2010
by Phil Sutin
St. Louis County plans to use federal economic stimulus money to complete some projects in a $120 million bond issue that failed at the polls in November 2008.
The county would not have to raise taxes to get the projects done, says Garry Earls, the county's chief operating officer. The county mainly would use operating funds to pay off the money it borrows, he said.
The 2008 proposal received a 50.14 percent majority but needed a 57.14 majority to pass. It would have financed a new Family Court building, a new Health Department headquarters and health laboratory, improvements to the courthouse, a new crime lab, repairing or replacing early warning sirens and furnishing a new animal control shelter in Olivette.
Here are the county's plans:
Health Department -- A three-story $20 million building of about 80,000 square feet would be built at 6065 Helen Avenue, Berkeley. It would house a rebuilt clinic, the department's headquarters and an expanded public health lab. Completion is expected in 2012.
The project would use half of the county's $40 million allocation of Recovery Zone Economic Development bonds. Using those bonds, part of the federal stimulus package, cuts the county's interest cost by 45 percent. (The remaining $20 million of the allocation would be used to help pay for a six-lane expressway between Olive Boulevard and Page Avenue.)
Family Courts -- The county is considering three sites for a replacement of the courts building, now at the southwestern corner of Brentwood Boulevard and Forest Park Parkway. The sites, all in Clayton, are a county office building at 121 South Meramec Avenue, a parking lot on the northeast corner of South Central and Carondelet avenues and space just north of a county parking garage on Shaw Park Drive and South Central next to the MetroLink station.
The family courts project, which does not yet have a cost estimate, would be financed by federal Build America bonds. Using them saves the county 35 percent of interest costs.
The county also plans to use $2 million of the Build America bonds to buy a two-story, 46,755-square-foot building at 1100 Corporate Square, Creve Coeur, near the Danforth Plant Science Center. The St. Louis County Economic Council plans to offer the space to start up small businesses, mainly in the health sciences field. The purchase was not in the 2008 bond issue proposal.
Earls said the county was moving quickly on the Build America projects because the deadline for using them is the end of the year.
Two projects on the 2008 bond issue still lack financing: the replacement and expansion of the police crime lab, at 111 South Meramec, and major renovation of the courthouse.
The animal shelter work is being financed in the Health Department's current budget. The emergency communications work is being financed with a 0.1 percent sales tax.
