Poughkeepsie Now Receives Lowest ‘Fiscal Stress’ Grade Since 2017

The City of Poughkeepsie has an unsavory reputation attached to its name for some. And while some people love to hate on Poughkeepsie, many in the city are working to make positive change. It looks like the city may be beginning to see the results of those efforts.

On Monday, September 24th, the City of Poughkeepsie received its latest Comptroller Fiscal Stress score, which had some pretty encouraging details in it.

Positive Change in Poughkeepsie

In 2024 alone, a number of new community programs, infrastructure projects, and businesses have come to the City of Poughkeepsie.

Poughkeepsie has seen the opening of its first official home for the Dutchess County Pride Center and a new Dutchess County Empowerment Center which aims to provide accessible resources to people struggling with mental health or substance abuse.

In terms of infrastructure, a number of road work initiatives began over the summer including the repaving of 13 different project areas.

SEE ALSO: More Substantial Road Improvement Projects for the City of Poughkeepsie [LIST]

Most recently, The City of Poughkeepsie embarked on clearing away debris and brush from a vacant lot on Main Street in an effort to cut down on the area becoming an encampment for those struggling with substance abuse.

Fiscal Monitoring System Assess Poughkeepsie

In the latest assessment from the New York State Comptroller's office, the City of Poughkeepsie received its best fiscal rating since 2017.

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The city was assessed through the Fiscal Stress Monitoring System. This system takes a look at a local government's "financial indicators, including year-end fund balance, cash-on-hand, short-term borrowing, fixed costs and patterns of operating deficits and creates fiscal stress scores."

A press release sent out by the city highlights a major win concluded from the latest assessment.

Poughkeepsie's Current Fiscal Standing

As of the most recent assessment, Poughkeepsie is even closer to moving out of the "susceptible to fiscal stress category."

For context, there are 4 possible categories a city can find themselves in. The worst category is "significant fiscal stress" which denotes the most fiscally stressed cities in the state. Then there's "moderate fiscal stress" which is less severe.

Then comes "susceptible to fiscal stress" where Poughkeepsie is.

If Poughkeepsie can move out of this current category, it'll move to have "no designation." The State Comptroller's Office explains this to mean that, "these entities do not meet the established point thresholds of the Fiscal Stress Monitoring System for classification in one of the stress categories."

While there is still a great deal of work to be done, the city has come a long way since 2017.