Iowa Central Community College will open the bidding for the sale of a $9 million general obligation bond next week.

The Iowa Central Board of Directors passed a resolution to sell the GO bonds at its meeting on Tuesday evening.

These bonds have already been approved by the voters.

Residents in Boone, Buena Vista, Calhoun, Carroll, Cherokee, Clay, Crawford, Franklin, Greene, Hamilton, Hancock, Humboldt, Ida, Kossuth, Palo Alto, Pocahontas, Sac, Webster and Wright counties voted in a special election in February 2018 to authorize $25.5 million of general obligation school bonds for college building construction and improvements.

Previously, $16.5 million of those GO bonds had been sold. Now, the college is selling the remaining $9 million.

The college will accept sealed or electronic bids for the bonds until 10:30 a.m. Nov. 10. The bids will be opened and evaluated at the Board of Directors meeting that night. The sale of the bonds is expected to be approved at that meeting.

“We’re doing $7 million as tax-exempt and $2 million as taxable bonds,” said Angie Martin, vice president for finance and operations. “There’s not a lot of difference in the rates of those two right now.”

The reasoning behind that division is because part of the bonds will be applied toward a new facility for the Iowa Central Fuel Testing Laboratory, which creates revenue for the school, Martin explained.

The bonds will fund other projects around Iowa Central’s campus, including renovating and remodeling the former student services building, which was vacated by departments moving into the newly-completed Greehey Family Student Success Center. The Greehey Center was funded in part from the first $16.5 million GO bonds issued in 2018.

The $7 million bonds will be repaid over a period of 14 years, Martin said, and the $2 million will have a maturity date of 10 years.