Sakonnet Times Commentary

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What Tiverton’s credit rating really means

I wrote in a letter last month that moving forward as a community means being able to discuss differences of opinion in the way that a community should.  At its bottom, that means we must treat the challenges that we face as problems to be solved, not as knots in a rope that we’re using for political tug of war.

We see a good example when the municipal government’s budget reserves tangle up with Tiverton’s credit rating.  As part of a recent refinancing arrangement, Tiverton hired Moody’s Investor Services to rate the town’s bonds, and the result came back as A1, which is the fifth-best rating possible (out of 16).  To hear town officials and their political allies tell it, the rating will cost the town big money and was mostly a consequence of voters’ approving elector-petition budgets at the last two financial town referendums (FTRs).

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