The City of Lisbon reviewed the city’s finances with Speer Financial to look at debt capacity of the city, which is roughly $6 million max for the city.

Maggie Burger of Speer Financial said the city has a 2020 general obligation bond on the books that is callable in 2028. That bond has a true interest cost much lower than current rates. The bond is paid for via tax increment financing (TIF), water revenue, sewer revenue and property taxes.

The city also has some revenue debt outstanding. That debt can not be paid via property taxes, but has to be paid for water and sewer revenues. That amounts for a total of $750,000 debt.

The city has a current TIF rebate obligation to Budget Blinds that sunsets in 2031.

“That TIF has a sliding scale for each year and is one of the smart ways to use TIF,” Burger said. “You rebate portion of taxes for someone building something in your community and rebate them taxes on a sliding scale.”

The city also has some sports complex funding coming from the TIF budget, which amounts to roughly $160,000 in TIF debt.

The city’s general obligation debt capacity saw a boost with the valuation increase in the past year, as fiscal year 2025 went from a $195 million property valuation to a $242 million property valuation.

“That’s a significant increase for property valuation,” Burger said.

Burger said by reducing the current debt capacity by $4 million to account for the general obligation bond already disbursed and holding back a 20 percent contingency so the city is not borrowing more than 80 percent of it’s capacity, that amounts to a total $6 million in debt capacity remaining for the city.

“Just because you have the ability to issue the debt, however, we don’t advise a city takes that unless they have determined the means and ways they plan to pay that debt back,” Burger said.

Burger said that the city is in a good financial state with not a large amount of debt outstanding, and has the ability to draw on new debt for projects that might be coming out.