Postage rates are rising on January 27. The cost of a letter will rise from 50¢ to 55¢. You have only a few days to stock up on Forever stamps.
Fair Oaks Farm will open its new hotel in a few days. I have not seen an announcement of when they will open but the Fairfield website would accept reservations for February 1.
Talbert Manufacturing was awarded a $320 million contract over the next five years to build semitrailers for the U.S. Department of Defense.
On Friday morning workers at Autumn Trace seemed to be installing the last few trusses. They had already installed many of the windows.
Also on Friday the Jasper County Finance Committee met. I had never been to one of these meetings so I went to see what they did. The Committee consists of the Commissioners and the County Treasurer and it must meet annually to approve the County's investment policy. Usually that meeting is very short and is the only time it meets during the year.
The Committee began by approving the minutes for both the 2018 and 2017 meetings. The County has quite a bit of money sitting in various accounts and the Treasurer has been investing that money in bank CDs. I recall at either a Commissioners or Council meeting a few years ago where there was a discussion of what kinds of investment the State allow counties to make, and the State is quite restrictive in what it allows. Interest rates have risen in the past two years as the economy has expanded and the Federal Reserve has tightened monetary policy. The most recent investment that the Treasurer made was at 2.85%. The total amount of interest income that the County receives is starting to approach a million dollars a year.
The Treasurer invests so that each month a CD matures. Breaking the total investment in parts that are frequently maturing reduces or eliminates early withdrawal penalties if funds are suddenly or not so suddenly needed, which can happen when there are big expenditures such as the recent energy upgrades at the Court House. At Friday's meeting a representative from the Surveyor's office requested that some of their maintenance fund be invested so that the interest would go to the GDIF account. (I do not know what the GDIF account is but it funds some of the minor repairs that are done to ditches.) Currently the Surveyor's funds are invested as part of total monies and the interest goes to the County General Fund. The Board approved the request as part of the investment policy for 2019.
1 comment:
Glad to know about Talbert. That is quite a story! Thank you very much.
Post a Comment