Bond sales complete for business park

By DEB WUETHRICH

The Tecumseh City Council authorized a new city fund on Monday night in order to receive proceeds from bonds that were recently sold for the Tecumseh Business and Technology Campus infrastructure project and to manage the payment of the debt service. In his city manager’s report, Kevin Welch noted that the $1.1 million bond sale was successfully completed on March 29. He said the interest rate varied from 4.0 percent to 4.75 percent.

“We need a separate fund to be able to handle these funds,” said Welch. He expects monies will be deposited on April 13. “Once the funds are distributed and the bonds paid off, this fund will cease to exist,” he said.

Construction is under way at the Tecumseh Business and Technology Campus, but some redesign work was needed when crews discovered that the gas utilities actually were located ten feet off of their anticipated location, requiring a change to the sewer installation and design. Welch said another surprise was finding that M-50 must have been 10 feet south of the current road at one time, something crews discovered while digging, with the roadway found about two feet beneath the surface.

“They had to break up big piles of cement before they put the water main in,” Welch told council members. The difference also was accounted for in the redesign.

A resolution also was passed authorizing the city manager to sign contracts relating to a street improvement project on North Evans Street through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

“This project will be 100 percent funded by the federal government through the stimulus package,” said Welch. He said the city’s only responsibility would be for engineering costs.