After months of meetings, negotiations, and number crunching, the city of Russellville was able to achieve a lower interest rate on three of their bond issues and save enough money to pay for essential road repairs, officials said.

At Russellville’s Nov. 18 city council meeting, Johnny Dill with Joe Jolly and Company, addressed the council and said the city was able to lower their interest rate to 2.57 percent from the previous 4.4 percent the city was paying on three bond issues from 1998, 2003 and 2004.

Those bonds total nearly $10 million, so getting a lower interest rate was able to save the city about $600,000.

Dill said the city was able to receive the lower interest rate after achieving an A rating – something Dill said was the product of hard work and being well-prepared.

“This is something that we have been working hard on for many months now because we knew how crucial it was for the city to save money where we could,” Russellville Mayor David Grissom said.

“It took a lot of planning and long hours, but it paid off in the end. The officials we spoke with could see that we have been working hard to get the city’s finances back in order.”

Grissom said the $600,000 saved from the refinancing would allow the city to put up matching funds for over 20 miles of road work that will be completed through the Alabama Transportation Rehabilitation Improvement Program (ATRIP).

“The ATRIP program is a great opportunity for us to get many of our roads repaved at a much lower cost to the city than if these funds were not available to us,” Grissom said, “so this isn’t something we want to miss out on.

“Every road that we were approved for will be able to be paved thanks to us securing this lower interest rate, and that is huge for our citizens who deserve to drive on better roads.”