Sheldon, Iowa — With the impending $9 million construction and renovation project for the health sciences department at Northwest Iowa Community College in Sheldon, more of the bonds approved in 2018 needed to be sold, and Moody’s Investors Service has given NCC a very good rating.
That from Mark Brown, NCC’s Vice President for Operations & Finance. He tells us more.
(as said) “Monday morning the college was selling the remaining portion of our general obligation bonds that our area voters had approved back in 2018. We had utilized roughly half a year ago to help with some construction projects and then today we’re selling $7.8 million of the remaining bonds. The original entire bond approval was 14 point 1 million.”
Brown tells us about the bond rating.
(as said) “When you issue bonds, then a credit rating needs to be garnered in order to let investors know the quality of the organization underlying those bonds themselves. So that’s why the rating occurred to start with. And the reading of AA2 is a really solid rating.”
He gives us a few specifics.
(as said) “The definition of that rating to investors… Our obligations are judged to be of high quality and are subject to very low credit risk. That’s a definition from the Moody’s Playbook and so that is the definition associated with an AA2 rating which is what we received. To put that in context, keeping in mind we’re one of the smaller community colleges in Iowa and if you’re bigger, you have a… usually have a rating advantage because size sometimes provides a larger foundational payback support. But notwithstanding our size, we are rated in what our bond counsel tells us is the upper tier of all community colleges in Iowa, which speaks well for the financial performance for the college over the recent years.”
Brown says the voters approved the measure in 2018 and roughly half of the funds were used for the Building D project. He says the bonds have been sold in two installments, which is appropriate in this case when there were two projects happening at two different times.
