{"id":974,"date":"2014-09-17T17:19:51","date_gmt":"2014-09-17T21:19:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shorebeat.com\/brick\/?p=974"},"modified":"2014-09-17T17:20:02","modified_gmt":"2014-09-17T21:20:02","slug":"ocean-countys-bond-rating-remains-aaa-as-outlook-upgraded","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/2014\/09\/ocean-countys-bond-rating-remains-aaa-as-outlook-upgraded\/","title":{"rendered":"Ocean County’s Bond Rating Remains ‘AAA’ As Outlook Upgraded"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>

The Ocean County Administration Building, Toms River, N.J. (Photo: Daniel Nee)<\/p><\/div>\n

Bucking the trend of both the state of New Jersey and the United States federal government, Ocean County has maintained its \u2018AAA\u2019 bond rating from two credit rating agencies with one upgrading the county\u2019s future outlook.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe met the crisis that they said we would have because we, as an entire board, looked at this in the same manner,\u201d said Freeholder John C. Bartlett, the county\u2019s budget director, referring to a massive loss of tax base and countless infrastructure projects that will be required in the wake of Superstorm Sandy.<\/p>\n

Moody\u2019s Investors Service previously rated Ocean County as AAA with a negative outlook, citing the county\u2019s more than 20 percent loss of its tax base thanks to the storm. But the county government, Bartlett said, has completely recouped the $16.5 million in surplus funding it spent in 2013 to make up for the loss of tax base in its operating budget, and used $500,000 less in surplus toward the 2014 budget, which it likewise expects to recoup.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wanted to signal to the ratings agencies that we were serious about what we were doing,\u201d Bartlett said.<\/p>\n

The handling of surplus funding as well as conservative bonding were cited by Moody\u2019s when they maintained the AAA bond rating this year and upgraded the future outlook of the county to \u201cstable\u201d from \u201cnegative.\u201d<\/p>\n

Freeholder Director Joseph Vicari said Ocean County\u2019s lack of debt allowed it to continue providing services to residents in the wake of Sandy.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe said we will not fire county employees, we will not have layoffs and we will not have furloughs,\u201d said Vicari. \u201cWe said we would do things differently.\u201d<\/p>\n

The bond rating\u2019s most concrete effect on county residents is a lower property tax burden. The AAA rating allows the county to bond at the lowest rates possible, reducing its ultimate debt service obligations.<\/p>\n

<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bucking the trend of both the state of New Jersey and the United States federal government, Ocean County has maintained its \u2018AAA\u2019 bond rating from two credit rating agencies with one upgrading the county\u2019s future outlook. \u201cWe met the crisis that they said we would have because we, as an entire board, looked at this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":976,"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_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":[12],"tags":[301,24,302,1592,300],"class_list":["post-974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ocean-county","tag-bond-rating","tag-brick-nj-news","tag-moodys-investors-service","tag-ocean-county","tag-ocean-county-budget"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/oc_admin_building.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pgt2Ft-fI","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/974","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=974"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/974\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}