Mayor Carlo DeMaria is pleased to announce that Standard & Poor’s Global Ratings (S&P) assigned its “SP-1+” short-term rating to the City of Everett’s $10.5 million series 2021 general obligation bond anticipation notes and “AA+” long term-rating and stable outlook to the City’s $1.9 million series 2021 general obligation energy improvement bonds. The City of Everett also affirmed the City of Everett’s “AA+” rating with a stable outlook on the City’s outstanding bonds.
“I am proud of the ratings that the City of Everett earned from S&P,” said Mayor Carlo DeMaria. “The rating assignments and affirmation show our strong financial stability during these unprecedented times. These ratings confirm our strong economic position.”
S&P highlighted the City’s strengths as:
• Strong economy, with access to a broad and diverse metropolitan statistical area (MSA);
• Strong management, with good financial policies and practice under our Financial Management Assessment (FMA) methodology;
• Adequate budgetary performance, with slight surplus operating results in the general fund at 1.4% of expenditures in
• fiscal 2020;
• Very strong budgetary flexibility, with an available fund balance in fiscal 2020 of 16% of operating expenditures, or $38.1 million;
• Very strong liquidity, with total government available cash at 26.2% of total-government-fund expenditures and 4.1x governmental debt service in fiscal 2020, and access to external liquidity we consider strong;
• Very strong debt-and-contingent-liability position, with debt service carrying charges at 6.4% of expenditures and net direct debt that is 40.8% of total-governmental-fund revenue, as well as low overall net debt at less than 1.5% of market value and rapid amortization, with 70.3% of debt scheduled to be retired within 10 years, but a large pension and other-postemployment-benefit (OPEB) obligation;
• Strong institutional framework score.
According to S&P, “The stable outlook reflects our view of the city’s very strong reserves, conservative budgeting, and strong financial management, which we expect will provide an adequate cushion to absorb unexpected revenue decreases or economic stagnation due to an uncertain economic recovery or COVID-19-related events.” S&P is a municipal bond credit rating agency that provides organizations a way to rate their financial situation. They had reviewed the City’s financials in October 2020 and during this updated review, S&P declared that the 2020 numbers came in better than expected. “SP-1+” is the highest short-term rating attainable and the “AA+” bond rating is consistent with the ratings of the prior years in the City of Everett. These high ratings provide a very optimistic outlook for the years to come with a strong financial future