City Gets Higher Marks From NY Comptroller

Mayor Yvonne Flowers announced today the city has received a more favorable fiscal stress score from the State Comptroller's office, in another sign of the fiscal healing of the city that once faced a $13.2 million general fund deficit.

Under the comptroller's rating system, the city is now just a few points from being removed from the "susceptible fiscal stress" category to having no designation.

The city also has been removed from the "susceptible environmental stress" category to having no designation in that category.

These are the city's best rankings since the Comptroller's Fiscal Stress Monitoring System was enhanced in 2017.

The Fiscal Stress Monitoring System evaluates local governments on financial indicators, including year-end fund balance, cash-on-hand, short-term borrowing, fixed costs and patterns of operating deficits and creates fiscal stress scores. The environmental stress category captures a comprehensive view of local economic conditions, such as unemployment, household income, strength of taxbase, and municipal budgeting practices.

"The hard work continues as we eradicate the deficit," said Mayor Flowers. "The city has toiled to improve its financial picture, realizing it will help attract investment in the city and lower our costs when we go out to bond for capital projects."

The comptroller's reports come on the heels of two key credit ratings agencies upgrading the city's financial status.

Moody's Ratings has upgraded the city's rating to Baa3 from Ba1, determining the city "is improving thanks to growth in the underlying economy and management's focus on generating sustainable governmental surpluses, aided, in part, by recently introduced formal policies."

Standard and Poor's Global (S&P) also bolstered the city's investment grade credit rating, from BBB to BBB+, saying, "The positive outlook reflects our expectation that management will continue to work toward growing its general fund balance while continuing to address its backlog of capital projects and maintaining prudent management strategies."

The city faced an approximate $13.2 million general fund deficit beginning in 2016 and worked to close that gap under the mayoral administrations of Rob Rolison and Marc Nelson. Mayor Flowers, who previously served on the Common Council's Finance Committee, thanked the former mayors, as well as past and present Common Council members and city Finance Commissioner Dr. Brian Martinez for their work in restoring the city to fiscal health.

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