The city of Santa Clarita was ranked in the top five percent of fiscally healthy cities on a new interactive website posted by the California State Auditor that compares the fiscal health of 470 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 92.77.

“Under the leadership and financial stewardship of our City Council, we pride ourselves on fiscal responsibility, and we continue to maintain a healthy and sustainable budget,” said City Manager Ken Striplin. “This report demonstrates that we have been successful. There is no doubt that the City is in good financial standing and we will continue to do all we can to ensure that it stays that way through our conservative budget practices.”

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 2016-17. 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 18 cities receiving high-risk designations, while 236 cities received moderate and 217 cities received low-risk marks.