by James Jordan, Sumner Newscow — The Wellington City Council made some financial moves with revenue bonds designed to save money on interest payments, and put off the purchase of a bulldozer for the landfill at its meeting Tuesday.

The simplest was the refinancing of general obligation bonds from 2008 and 2009, rolling them into a new single bond issue. The city should save around $52,000 in interest, financial consultant, said Wellington City Financial advisor John Haas.

The second one was a proposal to get bids for a $4.8 million utility bond issue to help pay for the electric substation north of the city. This has been talked about for more than a year, and would make electricity more reliable for the city. It would also prevent short term outages that cause problems for industries like GKN on the north end of town.

When creating the substation was first considered in 2013 the price tag was around $5.5 million. Haas was proposing the city allow him to take bids for the financing of the bonds. The city still has the option of either accepting the bids or doing nothing.

The money to actually pay off this project will come from the utilities, and some from the recent rate increases. The recent rate increase was to replenish reserves as well.

Haas said he would return at a meeting in January to recommend an underwriter for the bonds. At that point the city council will make the official decision of whether to proceed.

This station was part of the rate increase talks that went on for more than a year.

Councilman Jim Valentine questioned the project because of the city’s financial condition.

Haas and other councilmen said the city had spent a lot of time talking about that while they talked about rates over the past year.

Council member Kelly Green said the project “is an expansion that is a huge improvement to our infrastructure. This will benefit everyone in the city,” she said. “We have discussed this for hours and hours. We already have a lot invested in this.”

Council member Vince Wetta said when GKN has a glitch out there with a power outage, it costs them $100,000. He wants to prevent that, and he believes it will make power more reliable throughout the city.

“We have talked about this a lot,” he said. “This will close the loop. We have come this far and it is in the budget. We thought it was a good idea when we started it in 2013 and this is one more step.”

The council then took up considering a bulldozer for the landfill at a cost of $374,000. Public Works Director Jeremy Jones explained that the current bulldozer was not made for the landfill type environment which is too rough for the terrain. The engine has major problems. They have spent more than $35,000 on repairs this year, and it is not running now. To get it running they will have to spend at least another $50,000.

Vendors from Caterpillar and John Deere were at the meeting and talked about their products. They said a lease type arrangement might be a possibility, but it is hard to do because this is a very specialized application even for a bulldozer.

Both of them said they were not interested in offering any trade for the machine the city has now, and one of them said it was not even worth towing to Wichita because of all its problems.

It could be auctioned, and perhaps a farmer could use it on a farm to move dirt for a long time, but it is not fit for other types of work, Jones said.

Currently, the city is renting a dozer and based on hours of use, costs $8,000 to $12,000 per month.

Valentine questioned whether it might be better to just try to fix the old machine to save money.

Councilman Kip Etter liked the lease idea, and wanted to hear more from the dealers about options in that area.

Wetta said the dozer has become a money pit for the city and was interested in moving on to a new piece of machinery.

“What we have to decide is whether to spend $100,000 to fix an old machine until something else goes wrong, or spend our own money and pay off the rest of it,” he said.

Council members said they wanted to hear more about leasing options and to have more solid numbers before making a decision. That could happen at the next meeting this month.

In other matters:

•Wellington citizen Dianna Paige asked about a work session where a comment was unbecoming to a city employee. She also said private financial information on council members should be available to the public. We will have more information available on the story.

•The council announced a work session for 5:30 p.m next Monday to talk about the golf course. The course has a fungus on the greens an the city needs to help the golf course figure out what to do about the problem and how to pay for it. The bulldozer may also be discussed.

•There will be another work session at 5:30 p.m. on Nov. 23 with members of the Kansas Power Pool. The KPP is having its convention in the next week or so, and some council members will attend. Officials of the KPP will come to the work session to give the city a presentation on how power rates are set, and other electrical issues.

•The city also passed a resolution continuing an agreement with Union Pacific Railroad for the use of the land at Century Park. It was just a renewing of an old agreement at no cost to the city.

•Mayor Shelley Hansel read a proclamation for Veterans Day which is Nov. 11. Also on that day the VFW and American Legion will have a program at the high school starting at 10 a.m.

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