Central Oregon city tops billion mark in assets, audit shows.
BY JACOB PALMER | OB DIGITAL NEWS EDITOR
An audit by the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report finds that the city of Bend is worth slightly more than $1 billion.
The Central Oregon city was worth $968.5 million last year, and $849.5 million in 2007, the Bend Bulletin reports.
City officials hardly celebrated the news, according to the Bend Bulletin report:
“To be honest, it’s not really something we pay attention to,” said Sharon Wojda, the city’s finance director. “We’re not like, ‘Woo-hoo, $1 billion.’ It is what it is. On a day-to-day basis, we’re looking at where we’re spending money, and a lot of that goes to infrastructure, which then comes into our assets. It’s been slowly ticking up for a while, and it just happened to hit that $1 billion point.”
To put Bend’s assets in perspective, the city of Los Angeles Office of the Controller estimates the City of Angels to be worth $51 billion. Chicago’s assets as of 2013 stand at $30.7 billion. However, the city of Eugene, according to its most recent audit, hasn’t yet cracked the $1 billion mark, with its value sitting at $975.3 million. Redmond’s 2014 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report places the city’s assets at $341 million. Bend’s $1 billion in assets breaks down into about $113 million in cash reserves and nearly $840 million in infrastructure such as roads, water pipes and parking stalls. The remaining value is divided among other categories, such as funds for affordable housing and fee-charging programs such as sewer service.
Wojda later said that the city feels it has moved past the recession and that its finances were healthy.
City expenditures were also increasing — about $10 million over the last nine years.
“We have more people living in houses, all the new building activity, and we’ve got increased tourism, all of which comes together in a good way,” Wojda said in the report.
