Howard County sold $50 million in bonds Friday at an interest rate of 3.82 percent and refinanced $93.3 million in older bonds for a savings of $4.5 million in interest, officials said.
"We're very pleased," said county finance director Sharon Greisz, who said the county should save $3.9 million on interest for the refinanced bonds in the first year.
Because the bond transactions, which required a special session of the County Council, involved such large amounts of new and refinanced bonds, the county negotiated a deal with a series of buyers, said Greisz and Pat O'Connell, a private financial adviser and owner of Evergreen Capital Advisors of Princeton, N.J.
O'Connell said Howard was able to restructure its bond package in New York to get a better deal. "We didn't want to run a sale for new money at the same time" the older bonds were refinanced, he said.
The refinanced bonds were divided into $8.3 million for Metropolitan District utility projects and the remainder for financing other areas of county government.
