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Economic Stability:
Build the economic stability and vitality of the County by creating a culture of financial transparency.
Bond ratings are third party evaluations of how likely a government agency is to pay interest on fixed income securities and return principal.
Bond ratings are assigned by bond ratings agencies, like Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s and Fitch Ratings based on extensive research and a variety of metrics such as fiscal policy, stability, and economic growth. Bonds are assigned letters or letter and number combinations corresponding to their creditworthiness. These ratings may differ slightly between the bond ratings agencies based on their unique methodologies.
Higher bond ratings can result in lower interest rates for the County, saving taxpayers money and enabling additional investments in critical capital projects.
| Warrants | Underlying Ratings |
|---|---|
| Sewer Revenue Warrants | |
| 2013-A | Senior: BBB+ (S&P) BB+ (Fitch) Subordinate: BBB (S&P) BB (Fitch) |
| 2013-B | |
| 2013-C | |
| 2013-D | |
| 2013-E | |
| 2013-F |
Maintain Reserve Funds
Saving for future projects, acquisitions and other allowable purposes is an important planning consideration for local governments. Reserve funds provide a mechanism for legally saving money to finance all or part of future infrastructure, equipment and other requirements. Reserve funds can also provide a degree of financial stability by reducing reliance on indebtedness to finance capital projects and acquisitions. In uncertain economic times, reserve funds can also provide a budgetary option that can help mitigate the need to cut services. In good times, money not needed for current purposes can often be set aside in reserves for future use.
Jefferson County has three reserve funds – the Budget Stabilization, Catastrophic, and Uncertainty Reserve Funds. Our goal is to maintain or improve these funds to that they cumulatively stay above 16% of annual general fund expenditures.
Maintained Unassigned General Fund Balance
It is essential that governments maintain adequate levels of fund balance to mitigate current and future risks (e.g., revenue shortfalls and unanticipated expenditures). A healthy unassigned fund balance ratio provides many benefits to a local community. These include stabilizing services without budget cutbacks, offsetting revenue shortfalls in a poor economy, reducing the cost of borrowing by using reserves and enhancing the credit rating of the local government.
Our goal is to maintain Unassigned General Fund balance at 50% of total expenditures on an annual basis in order to maintain a positive unassigned General Fund balance.
