Santa Clarita received low-risk designation
The City of Santa Clarita was recently ranked in the top six percent of fiscally healthy cities by the California State Auditor. The California State Auditor’s website features an interactive dashboard that compares the fiscal health of over 450 cities based on 10 financial indicators. Santa Clarita received a low-risk designation and received perfect scores in the categories of liquidity, general fund reserves and in both pension and other post-employment benefits (OPEB) obligations, receiving a total combined score of 93.47.
“With the guidance and financial stewardship of our City Council, we were pleased to see the City’s overall score go up over last year’s,” said City Manager Ken Striplin. “The City remains in good financial standing, despite challenges and unforeseen circumstances that arise throughout the years. This conservative budget practice is what has allowed the City of Santa Clarita to continue to remain fiscally strong and add new benefits to our community, like the Trek Bike Park of Santa Clarita, when other municipalities are facing budget shortfalls.”
As part of the State’s high-risk local government agency audit program, the State Auditor aimed to identify cities that could be facing fiscal challenges by assessing their levels of risks using various financial metrics primarily found in each city’s Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR) for the Fiscal Year 2018-19. Some of these metrics included cash position/liquidity, debt burden, financial reserves, revenue trends, pension and OPEB obligations, among others.
Using information published by each city, the State Auditor placed high, moderate or low-risk designations on each city with regard to fiscal confidence. The analysis concluded with nine cities receiving high-risk designations, while 209 cities received moderate and 235 cities received low-risk marks.