Brookhaven officials plan to borrow $2.5 million to fund sewer and water improvements in annexed areas of town, namely the Brignall area.

The Brookhaven Board of Aldermen approved a bond issue as the funding mechanism for the project at a specially called meeting Tuesday.

“[We’re] getting funding to rehab sewer systems and money to put in water systems in the annexed area,” said Mike Jinks, city clerk. “Some of these water lines are pushing 80, 90 years old. The board has to decide whenever we issue bonds. Somebody will buy these bonds, they’ll receive interest on the bonds and the city will pay the bonds back.”

Jinks said for a project of this magnitude, issuing bonds is a common funding plan, adding that the city cannot raise utility rates enough to generate enough money in a period of time to do what needs to be done.

The city also approved a “preliminary statement” that would become official once the bonds are sold. This document outlines the bonds.

“You’re going to borrow $2.5 million and pay it back over a 20-year period of time,” Jinks said. “Then you can afford to generate enough income every year to pay the note as you go. You couldn’t do it all at one time out of existing funds, we just don’t have that kind of money.”

The city recently paid off a bond issue, so current tax rates are expected to cover the new bond. At this point, Jinks said they are not sure if the utility rates will increase. In similar situations in the past, they have not had to increase the bond amount.

Jinks said the plan is to improve the infrastructure system, with the bond funds to pay for improving the existing system and two matching grant programs to provide water and sewer services to people that were annexed and don’t have city water and sewer.

“This is a huge step.  We’ve been piece-mealing doing repairs along the way as they pop up — get a break, you fix it, get another break you fix it,” Jinks said. “And we know we have major issues in a lot of areas so the engineers have done this huge study to say ‘these are the worst areas we’ve got, the ones we need to concentrate on first.’

“So this is where we’re concentrating this initial amount of money,” he said. “No way is it going to fix all the problems but it’s going to fix the worst problems. And then down the road we’ll pick up another big section and look for funding for that. It’s always [good] when you can get some kind of grant funding to stretch these dollars. A lot of the rehab works done will be done with 50/50 grant money.”