Nevada County reviews municipal-bond options as capital projects await funding

At a special meeting of the Nevada County Board of Supervisors, staff and outside municipal finance advisers reviewed how tax-exempt municipal bonds and other financing tools could be used to pay for a set of county capital projects and maintenance needs.

The workshop, led by Erin Metler, Nevada County deputy county executive officer and chief fiscal officer, and Bobby Chung of KNN Public Finance, covered bond basics, methods of sale, credit-rating considerations and post-issuance obligations. Chung told supervisors "a municipal bond is really a form of a loan" intended to "accelerate and deliver projects" when paying cash is impractical.

The discussion matters because the county is weighing whether to borrow to fund multiple projects — including an animal shelter, a sheriff’s firearms range, correctional facility renovations and a dispatch training facility — while the county’s discretionary budget is tight and the bond market is at higher rates than in previous years.

Chung explained that Nevada County can access tax-exempt borrowing that typically lowers interest costs for public agencies but that federal rules limit private use and require most proceeds to be spent within three years. He…