By Greg Halbleib

NORMAL – The Heartland Community College board has approved moving some of its debt into more traditional methods to level out the tax levy and slightly lower the property tax rate, as well as pay for backlogged projects.

The Heartland board Tuesday night approved selling about $10.7 million in bonds to retire debt certificates for a variety of existing projects according to the college’s vice president of business services, Doug Minter.

“The existing debt certificates that are being retired are what have not yet been paid off on our wind turbines, facilities improvement measure projects, many of which have sustainability and energy savings in mind, and we had purchased land west of our original campus,” Minter outlined.

Minter says that debt has been through the operating budget, which includes tuition and fees, and moves into the more common method of financing, the bond and interest fund budget. Minter said that is in line with the college’s long-range plan.

“I like to use the ‘you are here’ arrow,” Minter explained. “There’s a number of things that we’ve been working in financial strategy to deal with both the state budget challenges as well as some longer-term financial concerns we have, and this is all part of an intentional strategy that we are executing.”

He adds that the revised method will improve operating budget ratios and ways to pay for backlogged capital equipment and repair projects without raising property taxes.

Greg Halbleib can be reached at [email protected].