The town of McCordsville wants to bring a traffic circle to Mt. Comfort Road at CR 750N.
Mitchell Kirk | Daily Reporter
McCORDSVILLE – The town of McCordsville plans to take on nearly $2 million in debt to tackle future road improvements, but leaders don’t expect tax rates to rise too much, if at all, to pay it off.
While property owners are expecting to pay more taxes because of the significant rise in assessments this year, such a jump in assessed value also drives tax rates down. Governments can keep those rates relatively stable, however, by using them to back general obligation bonds for improvement projects.
McCordsville leaders are pursuing a five-year general obligation bond issue for $1.85 million. Part of the funds would go toward design and right-of-way acquisition for a traffic circle on Mt. Comfort Road at CR 750N, which will serve the mixed-use McCord Square development getting underway that’s part of the future town center. A new police station is planned in that area as well. Funds will also go toward design and right-of-way acquisition for widening Mt. Comfort Road to four travel lanes between CR 750N and Second Street – another entrance to the future town center.
Tim Gropp, McCordsville town manager, said at a town council meeting earlier this month that the improvements will coincide with a stoplight planned at Second Street as a part of the McCord Square development, and widening Mt. Comfort Road between Second Street and Broadway, which the Indianapolis Metropolitan Planning Organization awarded federal funds to help with earlier this year.
Dennis Otten, a lawyer with Bose McKinney & Evans assisting the town, briefed officials on the process for the general obligation bond at the council meeting.
“A lot of communities, due to the recent reassessment, have seen a large increase in their assessed values,” he said. “And what can happen is their tax rates can go down if they don’t do anything, but they also have the opportunity to maintain their tax rates by doing a G.O. bond issuance that won’t increase the tax rate, it will maintain it level, but will give some funding for projects.”
He noted that once tax rates drop, anything a government would want to do outside of its normal budget would require an increase.
McCordsville’s net assessed value is rising nearly 25% for 2023.
“The idea here is to capture some of that increase, keep our tax rate as close to level, but utilize that increase in assessed value to be able to do a major project through a G.O. bond, which is a tax-backed bond,” Gropp said.
He pointed out that projections indicate a slight increase in property tax rates in future years because of the bond, but added that’s based on what he called a conservative estimate of how the town’s assessed value will rise – 7.5% in 2025, 2026 and 2027, respectively.
“You don’t know what’s going to happen in the future,” Gropp said. “Right now, if you ask me, I’d say our continued growth for the next few years is going to be higher than 7 ½%, but I would rather keep these numbers a little bit lower.”
Town council members approved an ordinance authorizing issuing the general obligation bonds 4-0, with Greg Brewer, Chad Gooding, Tom Strayer and Branden Williams voting in favor. Larry Longman was absent. Council members then voted a second time rather than waiting a month in order to move the process along quicker with the hopes of securing the best interest rate for the bonds as possible.
After that, council members voted 4-0 in favor of an ordinance to appropriate the bonds. They’ll have to wait until their Oct. 11 meeting to conduct their final approval, however, as it requires a public hearing, which is also slated for that meeting. The meeting starts at 7 p.m. and will be at Town Hall, 6280 W. 800N, McCordsville.
“The way I look at it is this: We’ve got to maintain our tax rate,” Brewer said. “The last thing people want is to lower the tax rate and come back in three years and go, ‘Hey, we’ve got to jack this up on you.’ It’s not easy to do, and we all know that these road projects are important. … It does us no good to build a town center that people can’t get in.”
Jennifer Hudson, a partner with LWG, an Indianapolis accounting firm assisting the town, told officials they may want to consider general obligation bonds in the future as well.
“As the town continues to grow – we expect it to with all the residential growth and commercial growth that’s occurring – your assessed value might continue to rise and your tax rates continue to fall, so this might be a strategy for the town to continue every three to five years,” she said. “A lot of communities do that, especially for road improvements.”
