Rainsville City Council approves ordinance to refinance Northeast Alabama Agri-Business Center

RAINSVILLE, Ala. (WAFF) – Rainsville city leaders are hoping to save taxpayer dollars and make improvements to one of the city’s largest facilities.

The Northeast Alabama Agri-Business Center attracts around 100,000 people to Rainsville every year.

The facility is built to handle rodeos, job fairs and most recently, COVID testing.

Rainsville Mayor Roger Lingerfelt said refinancing the building will help cut down on some of the city’s debt.

“It put the loan on the city, but it doesn’t show up on our debt rating. So, with that, it gave us the opportunity to actually come in as an A rating if we were going to be below that it would be directly on the Agri center but with it directly on the city we came in as an A rating and instead of saving $420,000 it saved us $754,000 over 29 years,” said Mayor Lingerfelt.

Lingerfelt said the Public Building Authority manages the center, but the city leases it.

He said the savings will be used to help fund upgrades at the center to attract more events and people.

“Because of the possibility of having some bigger shows we’re looking at upping our number of stalls and the stalls are where they put their horses, so we are trying to upgrade the stalls to like 300 or 350,” said Lingerfelt.

Lingerfelt said a meeting will be held on June 2 to discuss further details of the refinancing plan.

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