TycheNews:FirstFinanceDecoders
The first results from the Hudson Finance Decoder Project
In November 2025 we announced the Hudson Finance Decoder Project to help anyone, anywhere with creating a Strong Towns Finance Decoder for their City, Town or County. We can talk about and show you the first Finance Decoders that the community has created.
Background
"Citizens working together to analyze the financial health of their cities, towns and counties, across the USA and Canada" - that is the mantra of Hudson Finance Decoder Project (HFDP). We will help anyone with any of the hurdles that they may face, plus we are willing to brainstorm around what add-on opportunities are possible when you start analyzing your city, town or county.
With thanks to Strong Towns and their support, you can listen to the Bottom-Up Revolution podcast where we spoke about the HFDP.
If you're new to Finance Decoders, the Strong Towns Finance Decoder is a tool created by the organization Strong Towns to help anyone "Visualize the financial trajectory of your city" and "Understand whether your city is on track to keep its development, service, and growth promises." When you complete a Finance Decoder for your local government you will have measured your city’s financial health using 7 key metrics. From there, you can improvise and add on any additional analysis or contextualization that you want.
Let's Look at some Finance Decoders!
There are many things that have been interesting looking at the first FDs - the variety of fiscal health that we have seen, the complexity within some government's financial operations, the various challenges in picking out the relevant data, and more. Along the way we have seen cities with exceptional fiscal health (we're looking at you, Cedar Falls, Iowa) and other cities that have significant financial challenges. Let's walk through a few of the FDs:
Cedar Falls, Iowa - With zero net debt, and a net financial position that strengthens each year, this City of 40k+ in Iowa is an exemplar for good financial management.
Spartanburg, South Carolina - This is an interesting City to review - fast growth, yet a City of only 40k people. What makes the financial analysis interesting is that the City recently constructed a new baseball stadium, the financials of which start to appear in 2024 audited financial statements. The City's financials show significant growth in assets and liabilities; it will be fascinating to track the finances over the next few years to understand the impact of a new publicly-developed asset.
Danbury, Connecticut - This Finance Decoder and related analysis has three interesting add-ons beyond the basic seven metrics. 1) a view into revenue that breaks out school-related aid, 2) a view into Danbury's growing debt and how quickly debt has grown year-over-year, and 3) a comparison against a neighboring town, putting metrics for both local governments on a chart for contrast.
Pueblo, Colorado - Another City that has a solid financial performance. Several metrics are especially interesting to focus on, for example the betterment of the Net Financial Position from 2015 through 2024, and the Net book value to Cost of tangible assets ratio which is strong, yet is starting to show a decline over time.
Gainesville, Florida - The City has very complex finances with significant business-type activities that dwarf the governmental activities. The business-type activities include the Gainesville Regional Utility, gas, water, wastewater, Ironwood golf course and regional transportation system. This FD was constructed only for governmental activities and it shows that there are follow-on projects such as constructing a second FD that combines governmental and business-type activities.
Washoe County, Nevada - This is one of the first FDs that we have seen that analyzes a county. One unique thing about the FD that is worth checking out is the section "Analyzing Washoe County's Revenue and Liabilities Growth." Because Washoe County has a material amount of population growth there is a reasonable question of whether the County's revenue and liabilities growth is driven by population. This section adds in some per capita analysis and then reruns the per capita analysis using 2019 dollars. There's an interesting punchline in this analysis.
Colonie, New York - The Finance Decoder is not the only way to examine the fiscal health of a local government. Various states have implemented their own systems for stress testing. The New York Comptroller runs a yearly stress test system; when we create an FD for any local government we can add in the Comptroller's stress test results. For this story about Colonie look at the "New York State Comptroller's Fiscal Stress Monitoring" section to see how the FD results compare against the state's fiscal stress test. We will be looking for more opportunities to compare and contrast against other systems that examine fiscal health.
Midland, Texas - We are still looking at this FD to see some of the conflict and alignment between the 7 metrics. Midland's Net Financial Position has a sinusoidal curve, the Government transfers metric has a huge pandemic spike in 2021, all while asset to liabilities ratios are static and slightly improving.
What happens next?
The Hudson Finance Decoder Project is still live and we expect to see many more Finance Decoders in the near future. What is exciting for us is not just the creation of the FDs (which helps any citizen "Visualize the financial trajectory of your city") but also the creative ways that the FDs get extended into other analysis and combined with other fiscal health data.
Interested to know more? Contact karl@tycheinsights.com and keith@tycheinsights.com