CITY OF WILDWOOD EARNS HIGHEST FINANCIAL RATING DESPITE IMPACT OF COVID-19

Contact: Mayor Pete Byron, Commissioners Fitzsimons and Mikulski

609-846-2044

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

October 16, 2020 – Wildwood, NJ – Today the City of Wildwood successfully issued its $32.923M Notes at a rate of 0.279%. According to the City’s municipal advisor, Phoenix Advisors LLC, this is one of the lowest rates it has seen in the last two months.

In addition, Standard and Poor’s Global Ratings (S&P), a leading provider of independent credit ratings, has assigned its highest short-term rating of 'SP-1+' to the City of Wildwood meaning that the City is in good financial health despite the impact of COVID-19.

The strong S&P rating considered the following factors for the city:

• Economy: per capita effective buying income (EBI) and market value per capita were analyzed;

• Management: the City’s financial policies and practices were reviewed;

• Budgetary performance: the City had a slight operating surplus in 2018;

• Budgetary flexibility: available fund balance in fiscal 2018 of 9.8% of operating expenditures;

• Liquidity: The City has sufficient available cash and access to external liquidity;

• Debt and contingent liabilities: debt service, pension and other postemployment benefit (OPEB) obligations

“I would like to congratulate and thank the many hardworking people at City Hall who hit the ground running with this administration and participated fully in receiving this outstanding rating and sale result,” said Mayor Byron. “We can’t wait to see what more we can do in 2021.”

Commissioner Fitzsimons stated, “This is what we promised. We ran on a campaign platform to bring the city’s budget and spending into better health, and here is the evidence that we are heading in the right direction.”

The nearly $33M of notes are being issued to finance much needed infrastructure improvements to the City’s ongoing flood mitigation and street revitalization projects which were unanimously approved by Mayor Pete Byron and Commissioners Mikulski and Fitzsimons. Some projects are underway and will continue through 2022 while new projects are at various stages of the bidding process.

Commissioner Mikulski shared, “We have come a long way in this first year and can see various improvements all around our town. We intend to continue to provide continued improvements to our roadways for the safety and comfort of our entire community.”