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Winchester is still carrying the strain of a failed $11.5 million override, but the town picked up a piece of welcome financial news Monday: Moody’s affirmed its Aaa bond rating, the highest rating the agency assigns.
Town Manager Chris Senior delivered the update near the top of the June 15 Select Board meeting, calling it late-breaking. Moody’s affirmed the town’s Aaa rating without the town even needing to get on a call to answer questions, he said.
“It was great,” Senior told the board.
Senior credited the town’s finance staff, singling out Comptroller Stacie Ward’s team and Treasurer Ann Gill’s team for pulling together the materials behind the review.
Moody’s Aaa is the top mark the credit-rating agency assigns, and for a town, it signals that lenders see little risk that it will fail to repay what it borrows. That standing can let a municipality sell bonds — the debt governments issue to pay for capital projects — on more favorable terms. Banks literally compete to issue money, keeping interest rates low.
The timing matters because Winchester is heading back into the credit markets.
Ward asked the board the same night to advance $1 million in lieu of borrowing from free cash into the Solar Panel Fund, cash she said the town needed to cut deposit checks after June 30 and before July 4 to preserve federal-credit eligibility.
The town holds a $7.943 million authorization for the solar project, and Ward said the town was not going to borrow for the project in July and expected to wait until March to see how much it needed; she told the board to expect additional internal borrowings for other projects during the year.
The rating also lands as officials try to steady the town’s finances after the March override defeat left a structural gap in the operating budget.
At the same meeting, the board reviewed a proposed long-range financial planning committee meant to institutionalize multi-year forecasting as a successor to the State of the Town process, part of a broader post-override push that has included goal-setting sessions and work on retiree benefits and a possible residential tax exemption.
Senior’s announcement was the extent of what the board took up publicly on the rating. The written Moody’s report — including any outlook, stated strengths or risks behind the affirmation — was not included in the meeting packet.
That does not mean Winchester has solved its budget problems. It is evidence that, even under operating-budget pressure, the town is still viewed as a strong credit as it prepares to borrow — a distinction between the town’s long-term creditworthiness and the year-to-year squeeze on its operating budget that officials are still working to close.
Will Dowd is a Massachusetts journalist who covers municipal government and community life for Winchester News. He is also the founder and editor of The Marblehead Independent, a reader-funded digital newsroom.
