Marblehead bonds receive highest rating from S&P

MARBLEHEAD – Standard & Poor’s Ratings Group, which assigns credit ratings to municipal bonds, continues to like what they see in Marblehead – and so do investors.Selectmen met Friday morning to approve and sign two bond issues – a $12 million 20-year bond issue to permanently finance the town-approved Marblehead Village School rehab and notes covering one-year $3.3 million for Village School remodeling and the Glover Elementary School feasibility study.Finance Director John McGinn told the board S&P affirmed the town’s AAA bond rating and assigned the notes an SP-1+ rating, the highest long-term bond and note ratings the group awards to municipalities.As a result of the high ratings First Southwest Company of Boston, the town’s financial advisor, received nine bids on the bonds and seven bids on the notes. UBS Financial Services Inc. bid an average interest rate of 3.06 percent to win the bonds and Eastern Bank won the notes with a net interest rate of .469 percent.Asked what impact the ratings have on the town finances, Town Administrator Tony Sasso said, “I think it shows in the rates, the rates are competitive.”Selectmen James Nye, Judy Jacobi and Jackie Belf-Becker approved and signed both financial documents as requested by McGinn and Town Treasurer Patricia Murray.At McGinn’s request the board members also approved a “house-cleaning” policy clarification defining overtime for the town’s 13 non-exempt administrative employees, who work overtime on “very rare occasions.””In the past year one person worked overtime,” McGinn said. The employees in question work 40 hours a week, 37 1/2 hours with a 1/2-hour lunch. Any overtime would be worked at the request of their boss and would be in excess of 40 hours.Board members tabled action on McGinn’s third item, an anti-fraud policy for the town to instruct employees how to report fraud if they become aware of it. McGinn said the policy was suggested by the town auditor.”There’s no circumstance precipitating this,” McGinn said. “The auditor recommended that we have this in place on the off chance it was ever needed.”