Washoe County, Nevada Financial State
Washoe County, Nevada and the Strong Towns Finance Decoder
We wanted to find a way to view the health of Washoe County, Nevada's finances over time using the Strong Towns Finance Decoder.
Strong Towns has a vision - “Your community needs you to be an effective advocate for change. We can help you get there” which is something that we relate to. Strong Towns recently released the Finance Decoder, a tool to “visualize your city’s financial trajectory, and understand whether your city is on track to keep its development, service and growth promises.”
The tool is fairly straightforward: 1) you collect your county's yearly, publicly available audited statements, 2) wade through the audited statements to find a dozen key numbers and input them into the Decoder tool (a Google Sheet), 3) review to make sure you did the data entry correct. What do Audited Statements look like? This is an example of Washoe County's Audited Financial Statement for 2024.
We like the Strong Towns’ Finance Decoder for a number of reasons. You don’t need to be a CPA to input the data, you only need some patience to find key numbers such as the County's total liabilities, or yearly interest payments. The tool presents the County's data using 7 basic charts which are relatively easy for a layperson to visualize and understand. The story presented is high level and does not get into the weeds; having read through a number of the Audited Statements it is easy to get overwhelmed with accounting details.
In the remainder of this article we will speak to our high-level process, we will show the 7 charts with their descriptions, we will include some additional analysis that analyzes the rapid growth in revenue and liabilities, and, lastly, we will provide a more detailed account of our process for those who want to know and/or validate what we did.
The Google Sheet that shows the full Finance Decoder for Washoe County can be found online here.
Washoe County's Government Activities versus Business-type Activities
For this Finance Decoder analysis we are analyzing a combination of Washoe County's government activities and business-type activities. Washoe's business-type activities include the sewer utility, golf courses, and building permit activities.
Washoe also has one separate Component Unit that we did not include in this analysis - Truckee Meadows Fire Protection District
7 Charts that explain Washoe County, Nevada
Note that these charts can be found under the "Results" tab of the Finance Decoder google sheet.
Sustainability Indicator - Net Financial Position
What it is:
The difference between the city’s financial assets (like cash and receivables) and its liabilities (like debt and pensions). This is the cumulative surplus/deficit that the city has accumulated through successive budget cycles.
What it tells you:
A positive net financial position suggests the city has more financial assets than obligations and is in a better position to weather downturns, invest in infrastructure, or respond to emergencies without resorting to borrowing or service cuts. If this number is negative, the city has spent more than it has saved and is relying on future revenue to pay past bills.
What the trend shows:
A downward trend means the city is growing more reliant on borrowing or deferring payments. An upward trend means it’s becoming more financially secure.
Our view:
Washoe County has a negative net financial position that has improved between 2019 and 2024, with the 2022 improvement driven by government payments during the COVID pandemic (American Rescue Plan Act funding). 2023 to 2024 was essentially flat, so we would look at the 2025 audited financial statement for an improvement trend.
Sustainability Indicator - Financial Assets to Liabilities
What it is:
The city’s financial assets—such as cash, receivables, and other short-term holdings—divided by its total liabilities. This is a different way of presenting the Net Financial Position.
What it tells you:
This ratio shows whether the city has enough liquid financial resources to cover what it owes. A ratio below 1 means it would not be able to pay off its liabilities using only its financial assets, which is a sign of financial stress.
What the trend shows:
A rising trend means the city is improving its financial buffer. A falling trend suggests the city is becoming less able to handle its obligations without borrowing or cutting services.
Our view:
Related to Net Financial Position, our financial assets to liabilities ratio is improving. Similar to NFP, 2023 to 2024 was flat so we will analyze the 2025 audited financial statement (when it comes out) to see if the ratio improves, declines, or continues flat.
Sustainability Indicator - Total Assets to Total Liabilities
What it is:
The value of all the city’s assets (including infrastructure) divided by its total liabilities.
What it tells you:
A ratio above 1 means the city owns more than it owes (solvent). Below 1 means it owes more than it owns (insolvent).
What the trend shows:
A downward trend means the city is becoming less solvent. An upward trend shows improving financial resilience.
Our view:
Similar to the Financial assets to total liabilities ratio above, 2023 to 2024 was flat so we will analyze the 2025 audited financial statement (when it comes out) to see if the ratio improves, declines, or continues flat.
Sustainability Indicator - Debt to Total Revenues
What it is:
The total liabilities the city owes compared to how much revenue it collects in a year.
What it tells you:
This shows how many years of income it would take to pay off all debts if every dollar went to debt repayment.
What the trend shows:
If the ratio is rising, debt is growing faster than income—this is unsustainable. If it’s falling, the city is gaining control of its obligations.
Our view:
Our debt to revenue has seen an dramatic improvement in 5 years, with the bulk of the improvement between 2019 to 2022. Although it sounds like a broken record, the 2025 audited financial statement data will be interesting to see. Does Washoe County see its debt decline and/or total revenues increase?
Flexibility Indicator - Interest to Revenues
What it is:
The percentage of annual revenue spent on interest payments.
What it tells you:
This shows how much of the budget is consumed by past borrowing. The higher the percentage, the less room for services, maintenance, or investment.
What the trend shows:
An increasing trend limits future choices and can crowd out basic services. A decreasing trend improves flexibility and budget health.
Our view:
Our interest payments on our debt as a percentage of revenue are reasonable.
Flexibility Indicator - Value to cost of tangible assets
What it is:
The current value of the city’s physical assets compared to their original cost.
What it tells you:
This indicates how well the city is maintaining its infrastructure. A low value means assets are aging and wearing out.
What the trend shows:
A declining trend means the city is falling behind on maintenance. A stable or rising trend suggests it is keeping up
Our view:
High performing cities that are managing and maintaining their infrastructure at the highest levels will have ratios around and above 65-70%. Our management of our capital assets is concerning.
Results - Government Transfers to Total Revenue
What it is:
The share of the city’s income that comes from state or federal aid.
What it tells you:
High dependency on outside funding makes the city vulnerable to political or economic shifts beyond its control.
What the trend shows:
If the trend is rising, the city is becoming more dependent on outside help. If it’s falling, the city is strengthening its local revenue base.
Our view:
With the exception of pandemic ARPA revenue spikes in 2022 the County is generally around 20% of the budget coming from state and federal aid. We would want to compare this ratio against other Nevada counties to see whether the County is extraordinarily high or low.
Analyzing Washoe County's Revenue and Liabilities Growth
In the Finance Decocder Google Sheet we included an additional tab "PerCapita_InflationAdjusted_Revenue_Liabilities" which analyzes the growth of revenue and liabilities. Washoe's revenue grew from $580,907,580 to $885,765,700 between 2019 and 2024, while Washoe's liabilities grew from $897,795,717 to $1,129,900,094 from 2019 to 2024. While Washoe County's population grew significantly during this time we didn't know if the growth in revenue was driven by population, by inflation or by both.
The purpose of this sheet is to look at several data points on a per capita basis, and adjusted for inflation. Between 2019 and 2024 Washoe County's population increased by approximately 20,000 people. In addition, inflation was the biggest macroeconomic change. We want to look at a) do revenues and liabilities change significantly over 6 years when viewed on a per capita basis and b) if we recast 2020-2024 revenue and liabilities in 2019 dollars what would the per capita revenue and liabilities look like?
In the chart above we perform per capita analysis on the revenue and liabilities, year-by-year using current year dollars. We can see that both revenue per capita and total liabilities per capita increase. We wondered if the main driver was inflation so we recast each year's revenue and liabilities to 2019 dollars and then reran the per capita analysis. What we find is inflation-adjusted revenue per capita increases slightly (12%) between 2019 and 2024. Inflation adjusted liabilities per capita decreases (8%) between 2019 and 2024.
Data
For this study we used the Washoe County's Audited Financial statements from 2019 through 2024. This gives us 6 years of Audited data to input into the template. We collected the Audited Financial statements from the County's website.
While we have made every attempt to ensure that we have done the data entry correctly, and we believe that we have input correct information into the Finance Decoder it is possible that we have made one or more mistakes. We appreciate readers noting any issues that they see.
Note that we are making a copy of the completed Finance Decoder available here. This document is a Google Sheet and you will have read-only access to the Finance Decoder. We recommend saving a copy (File > Make a Copy) if you want to analyze, change, recreate, etc.
Process
In this section we will provide details on how and where we drew information from the Audited Financial Statements. Using the 2024 audited financial statement as a guide, the individual data elements can be found on the following pages (pdf pages, not document pages), using the "Total" columns (pdf page numbers referenced below):
- Page 26 - Current assets, capital assets, deferred outflows, total liabilities, deferred inflows
- Page 27 - Program revenue, interest on long term debt
- Page 31 - Capital assets
- Page 75 - "NOTE 6 – CAPITAL ASSETS " - assets not being depreciated, assets being depreciated, Total capital assets
Credits
This data story and its content is available under the Creative Commons Attribution license.
Persons or organizations that Share or Adapt this content should provide Attribution that provides appropriate credit, which includes:
© Copyright 2025
Tyche Insights, P.B.C.
For example, a data product or service that utilizes this article could include attribution such as:
"Portions derived from 'Washoe County NV Financial State', © Copyright 2025 by Tyche Insights, P.B.C., Davlee73 & licensed under the CC BY 4.0 license"