Bremen Public Schools is a step closer to issuing about $4 million in bonds for its upcoming renovation project. To do that, Superintendent Dr. Jim White says the school corporation is amending its existing lease with the building corporation. It’s a legally-separate entity that actually owns the building and borrows the money on behalf of the school corporation. “We had an existing loan out that falls off in 2022,” he explains, “so it was just as easy to amend that lease with the existing building corporation than to try to form something different.”
White says no comments were offered during a public hearing on the lease amendment Monday, and the school board adopted a resolution to approve the financing.
The upcoming renovations will include some energy-saving upgrades. “We’re replacing the lighting on our football field, which was put in in the ‘60s, and we also have a 30-year-old cooling tower at our middle school that we’re replacing,” he says, “and we’re doing some upgrading of temperature controls.”
White says Performance Service of Indianapolis got the board’s approval to oversee that work as a guaranteed energy savings contract provider. Under the process, a state-qualified provider guarantees that the work will pay for itself over a certain period of time. If it doesn’t, the company has to pay the difference. White says Performance Service was the only company to respond to the school corporation’s request for qualifications.
