Final payment clears city debt

With a payment of $206,319.25 to the Kansas Department of Health and Environment regarding the City of Holton’s sewer plant, the city is now officially out of debt.

During the Holton City Commission’s Tuesday, Feb. 17 regular meeting, Holton City Manager Teresa Riley noted the payment to KDHE represented the end of a 20-year payout on a KDHE revolving loan approved 20 years ago for the construction of a sewer plant, as well as the end of all city debt.

“That is our final payment, and now we have no debt service at all,” Riley said of the payoff of the KDHE revolving loan, prompting applause from members of the commission.

For Commissioner Tim Morris, the KDHE loan payment and ending of city indebtedness represented coming full circle, as the city’s total indebtedness was about $13 million when Morris joined the commission in April of 2009 and has since been slowly but surely paid down — and he said he wants to keep it that way.

“When I walk away this time, I just want to make sure we’re not deep in debt,” Morris said. “I can take a little debt, but when I go away, I want it to be minute.”

In December of 2005, the Holton City Commission approved an agreement to use KDHE’s revolving loan fund for infrastructure improvements to pay for construction of a new wastewater treatment plant, with payments on the $4,628,576.02 loan beginning in September 2006, Riley said. Construction on the new sewer plant began in 2005 and the plant went online in 2006.

“However, we were still paying for the old sewer plant at the time under the same type of loan agreement,” she said. “KDHE allowed us to only pay the interest each year until the old loan was paid off. We then began paying $206,319.25 twice a year starting March of 2013. We have paid that amount twice a year since.”

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