S&P Rates Bloomfield Township 'AAA' - Highest Possible Rating
Standard & Poor’s (S&P) just announced that they are rating Bloomfield Township’s newest bonds AAA - the highest possible rating - and re-affirming the AAA credit rating assigned to the township on the whole. This rating signals to investors around the world that Bloomfield Township’s debt obligations are a safe investment.
Despite the challenges of the pandemic, the rating agency felt that Bloomfield Township “is benefitting from economic development and population growth that support its sustained budgetary balance and a very strong reserve and liquidity position.” In addition to the AAA rating, S&P also assigned the Township with a STABLE outlook, indicating a reduced likelihood of a change to the rating.
The Township recently issued these new bonds to refinance (refund) previously issued bonds at a lower interest rate, saving the township hundreds of thousands of dollars per year in interest.
In determining its rating, S&P concluded the following:
Very strong economy, with access to a broad and diverse metropolitan statistical area (MSA)
Strong management, with good financial policies and practices under our Financial Management Assessment (FMA) methodology
Adequate budgetary performance, with operating surpluses in the general fund and at the total governmental fund level in fiscal 2020
Very strong budgetary flexibility, with an available fund balance in fiscal 2020 of 63% of operating expenditures
Very strong liquidity, with total government available cash at 109.0% of total governmental fund expenditures and 5.7x governmental debt service, and access to external liquidity we consider strong
The full report from S&P is shown below and is available for download here.