The Truth in Accounting organization would give the Village of Williamsburg a grade of B for fiscal year 2025.
Truth in Accounting, located in Chicago, has graded the most populous 75 cities in the U.S. each year for the last nine years by looking at their yearly audit reports, which each city must submit in accordance with state and federal law.
Using their criteria, the Village would be given a B by the organization. Please find their report and method here:
https://www.truthinaccounting.org/library/doclib/Financial-State-of-the-Cities-2025.pdf
Please find the Village of Williamsburg’s FY2025 audit here:
https://osaconnect.osa.nm.gov/auditReportSearchDetail.html?id=b4461075-84dd-42eb-b83c-2e6d98c4241d
Truth in Accounting’s method is to take capital assets and debt related to capital assets out of their evaluation of financial health in order to focus on the debt most cities are racking up to pay for future employee retirement and health benefits.
The organization grades a city by the cash left over or the cash deficit it has after paying its bills that are unrelated to capital assets and debt related to capital assets.
The cash left over is divided by the city’s population. If a city has $10,000 or more in surplus for each citizen, it earns an A. No city made that grade.
If a city has between $1 and $4,999 in surplus for each of its citizens, it earns a B.
If the city would go into deficit if it had to pay its bills, including the retirement and health benefits instead of in the future, it earns between C and F grades.
Current accounting practices allow cities to put off retirement benefit payments to future generations, hiding the actual debt from taxpayers.
A city is also allowed to subtract the “current” market value of the stock portfolio of the pension and health funds from the debt owed.
In other words, current accounting practices assume the city would sell off its retirement investment portfolio to pay part of the debt. So the pension liability is the additional cash the city would have to come up with after it sold off the portfolio.
But that’s not all. The law allows a city audit to give only the required yearly debt owed–the “amortized” pension liability over many years. It’s easy to see why Truth in Accounting is alarmed by the retirement debt being hidden by current accounting practices. It estimates that 50 percent of all municipal debt is this hidden retirement debt.
Our poor future generations will pay these hidden future costs.
On page 12 of the Village’s FY2025 audit, it states that the net pension liability (after selling off the stock portfolio) is over $105,000.
According to the Truth in Accounting’s method, the Village had $2,642,428 in liquid capital assets not related to capital assets and not restricted or spoken for as of June 30 2025.
The Village had $1,184,141 in bills, including over $105,000 in PERA contributions–not related to capital-asset debt.
After paying its bills, the Village would have $1,458,287 in surplus to distribute to 458 residents (Census’ 2026 estimate). That comes to $3,184 for each resident, which earns the Village a solid B grade, according to Truth in Accounting.
It should be noted that the state only requires the cities to pay about 10 percent of the pension liability in a year. The Village had to pay about $10,000, nearly double what it had to pay in FY2024. Their city clerk, Amanda Cardona, received a massive salary and benefits increase–from around $57,000 to $94,000, according to the audit.