DeKalb will get $90 million boost from stimulus bonds

DeKalb County now has $90.8 million in low-interest rate bonds to add jobs and redevelop poor areas that have taken a significant hit from the economic recession, CEO Burrell Ellis’s office said Thursday.

The bonds are part of the $787 billion federal stimulus act. They allow the county to create “Recovery Zones,” — ones that have significant unemployment, poverty or a high rate of home foreclosures — and lets more manufacturing projects to qualify for tax-exempt bond financing, making them more attractive for banks to loan money.

The bonds come in two forms — $36.3 million for projects in a so-called Recovery Zone — and $54.5 million for bonds that can be used to build or renovate certain types of private property in those areas, county spokeswoman Kristie Swink said.

The federal government has provided little detail as to how the bonds can be used, however, they cannot be used to build or renovate golf courses, liquor stores, massage parlors or race tracks, Swink said.

Ellis, who has traveled to Washington, D.C. to advocate for stimulus money for DeKalb County, learned Thursday that his office would receive the bonds but had no further details. The money must be spent by 2010, however, he said in a statement that it would be used right away.

“We have been in frequent communications with the Obama Administration, and this award is coming at a critical time,” Ellis said in a statement. “The funds have been awarded to create jobs and we intend to put them to immediate use.”