The Public Math

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Did Leander get value for its money? (2022 check)

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The short answer

In 2022, Leander’s main savings account shrank. The city spent less than its budget. The city’s report says most of the drop came from one thing: its investments lost value on paper when interest rates jumped.1

What happened

  • The general fund is the city’s main account. It pays for police, fire, parks and streets.
  • Its investment earnings came in at minus $4.1 million in 2022, mostly a paper loss.1
  • The city’s report calls this the key reason its fund balance fell $2.8 million.1
  • Without that paper loss, income would have topped spending by about $5 million.1
  • The city spent $3.1 million less than its budget.1

Where the transfers went

The general fund moved $5.08 million to other city funds.1

  • $4.40 million went to building projects.
  • $0.54 million went to other city funds.
  • $0.14 million went to paying debt. This was $0.65 million less than planned.

The other side

  • A paper loss is not lost cash. It goes away if the city holds the bonds until they pay off.
  • City rules keep its investments short. The average must be 2 years or less (rule as written in the FY2024 report).2
  • Across all city funds, the paper loss shrank by $0.49 million in the next three months.3
  • Investment earnings were back up to $3.6 million in 2023 and $5.4 million in 2024.4
  • The paper loss was real while it lasted. At Sept. 30, 2022, the city’s investments were worth $5.7 million less than they cost.3

Questions to ask

  • Where can the public find the city’s yearly reports from the earlier years?
  • Where does the city post the list of projects from past bond votes?

Changes to this page

  • Nov. 2, 2026: Added questions to ask.
  • Nov. 2, 2026: We checked every figure against its source. We reworded the other-side points so they stick to what the sources show.

What you can do or watch next

  • Watch next year’s budget to see if service levels change.
  • You can ask council members how they measure results.
  • See city budget fy2027 for this year’s plan.

What we still don’t know

  • The city’s yearly reports from 2016 to 2020 are not on the sites we use. So we can’t say how 2022 compares with those years.5
  • The list of projects promised in the 2016 bond vote is not on the sites we use. So we can’t yet say whether those projects were built.5

Footnotes

  1. City of Leander FY2022 Annual Financial Report, in the Feb. 16, 2023 council packet (CivicClerk file 367). Saved copy. Accepted that night (minutes). Public copy of the final FY2022 report: https://emma.msrb.org/P21717438.pdf (MSRB EMMA). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6

  2. City of Leander Annual Financial Report FY2024, interest rate risk note. City archive item ADID=194. Saved copy. Public copy: https://emma.msrb.org/P21900727.pdf (MSRB EMMA; byte-identical to the saved copy). ↩

  3. Leander quarterly investment report, Oct.–Dec. 2022, same packet: unrealized loss $5,713,611 at Sept. 30, 2022 and $5,222,418 at Dec. 31, 2022, a change of $491,193. ↩ ↩2

  4. Series 2025 CO preliminary official statement, Table 12. saved copy. ↩

  5. CivicClerk council records start in January 2022. Older reports are on a site we do not use. ↩ ↩2

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