Mayor touts fiscal surplus
WOONSOCKET – Audited financial statements for the fiscal year ending June 30 confirm that the city and the Woonsocket Education Department both ended the budget cycle with operating surpluses, Mayor Lisa Baldelli-Hunt announced.
Performed by the independent auditing firm of Hague, Sahady & Co., the audit, the mayor said, represents the company’s “clean, unqualified opinion” – fiscal jargon that essentially means there are no caveats or accounting quirks underpinning the findings.
The auditors determined that, as of June 30, the last day of fiscal 2017, the city’s unassigned fund balance stood at $5,885,189, or 4.3 percent of budgeted expenditures.
For the WED, the available fund balance was $3,361,933.
“Woonsocket is turning an important corner,” Baldelli-Hunt said in a statement. “Just three years ago we were dealing with large, accumulated operating deficits that had necessitated state intervention through a Budget Commission. Rather than just giving in or making rash financial decisions, we instead embarked on a conservative fiscal recovery path that has better positioned ourselves
for future financial stability and growth. This has been a successful path, and we need to keep moving forward on it.”
Finance Director Christine Chamberland said the growing fund balance was driven by an operating surplus in the general fund of almost $1.2 million on the municipal side and over $746,000 for schools. y Baldelli-Hunt praised
Chamberland’s efforts in moving the city toward improved financial stability. She said, “Director Chamberland and her department have dedicated themselves tto work tirelessly to help ensure that Woonsocket never finds itself in the kind of financial distress that it was in only a short while back.”
Baldelli-Hunt also noted that the city’s financial statements show that bond debt fell by more than $9.5 milllion during the fiscal cycle, the combined result of the rcity continuing to pay down dold loans and refinance existing bonds that were floated to pay for the school construction projects.
Keeping a tight rein on spending, Baldelli-Hunt says her administration has not issued any new general obligation bonds to finance capital expenditures, road repairs and other infrastructure improvements. Improv- ing the city’s liquidity and keeping a rein on debt are both vital to maintain the momentum the city’s has gained with the credit rating agencies in recent years, she said.
“Our general obligation bonds are rated seven steps higher today by Fitch than they were at the beginning of fiscal year 2015,” the mayor said. “It is gratifying to see that these outside professional agencies have also recognized the progress that we have made.”
The mayor called the rat- ings “proof” – for residents, businesses and employees – that the administration is “doing the right thing and moving city finances in the right direction.”