{"id":7157,"date":"2015-12-16T01:24:10","date_gmt":"2015-12-16T06:24:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shorebeat.com\/brick\/?p=7157"},"modified":"2015-12-16T01:24:10","modified_gmt":"2015-12-16T06:24:10","slug":"brick-receives-high-grade-credit-rating","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/2015\/12\/brick-receives-high-grade-credit-rating\/","title":{"rendered":"Brick Receives ‘High Grade’ Credit Rating"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Brick<\/a>

Brick Municipal Building \/ Photo: Daniel Nee<\/p><\/div>\n

Brick’s credit rating was assessed at Aa2 by Moody’s Investors Services, the third-highest rating a municipality can receive.<\/p>\n

The ratings is considered “high grade” and an overall investment-grade rating, which allows the township to pay low interest rates on its debt.<\/p>\n

“They look at us as a very financially supple town,” said Mayor John Ducey.<\/p>\n

Ducey said part of the reason for the high rating was due to the township’s current surplus. Brick’s surplus level became a campaign issue during the most recent election, with the Republican council candidates criticizing Ducey’s administration for keeping approximately $10 million surplus.<\/p>\n

“They\u2019re giving us the highest rating because we have the surplus,” Ducey said. “There was talk leading up to the [election] that we shouldn\u2019t have a surplus, that it\u2019s a waste. But it shows we\u2019re a financially strong town, that we\u2019re not going out of business.”<\/p>\n

Brick uses its borrowing power to fund its capital budget, which includes items such as road improvements, park projects, equipment upgrades and other infrastructure improvements.<\/p>\n

“The only way you can do a park, do infrastructure [projects], is to borrow,” said Ducey. “And the interest rate you pay is based on your rating. It\u2019s not the most exciting thing in the world, but it\u2019s an exciting thing for the town.”<\/p>\n

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Surplus level cited as reason for high, investment-grade rating, mayor says…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3985,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[301,24,1826],"class_list":["post-7157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","tag-bond-rating","tag-brick-nj-news","tag-credit-rating"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/checkbook_township.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pgt2Ft-1Rr","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7157\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}