Reserves, cash, and days — the same liquidity, three very different-looking numbers · FY2025 (peers audited; Iowa City internal) · June 2026
Moody's — the agency that rated ICCSD — measures liquidity with two ratios, on purpose, because each hides what the other reveals:
We then add a third lens the district uses on its own dashboard — Day's Net Cash Ratio (cash ÷ average daily spending = days of cash on hand). It measures almost the same thing as the cash ratio, but expressed in days rather than a percent — which, as you'll see, makes the very same position sound far less alarming.
Lenses 1 & 2 — Moody's ratios (% of revenue)
Lens 3 — the district's own KPI (days of cash)
Day's Net Cash Ratio = Cash & Investments ÷ (Total Expenditures ÷ 365). FY2025; the district's own target is 90+ days. Iowa City's FY2025 is its own internal figure (unaudited).
The most important lens is the one Iowa City can't show. For FY2025 every peer posts an audited reserves ratio (peer median ~13%) — the single number a rating analyst reaches for first. Iowa City has no bar at all: its FY2025 audit isn't filed, so the figure simply doesn't exist. A blank where every peer has a measurable green bar is, by itself, the story.
On the measures it can report, it sits in the bottom group — and the unit flatters it. From its own internal books Iowa City reads as 9.1% net cash and 33 days of cash — "days" being the friendlier-sounding number ("33 days" lands softer than "9%"). Both land it #11 of 13, well below the peer medians (~26% net cash, ~93 days). Two peers with their own troubles (College/Prairie, Waterloo) sit even lower — but Iowa City is firmly in the weakest group and, unlike them, has no reserves figure to fall back on.
And even that cash figure is generous. The net-cash bar is shown before Moody's subtracts short-term borrowing. Iowa City is precisely the district leaning on it — a planned $25M tax-anticipation warrant plus a $10M interfund loan in FY2026. Net that out, as Moody's does, and the one lens Iowa City still has collapses further. Peers' cash mostly sits well above their reserves (median gap +11 points) because it's real surplus; Iowa City's is thin and partly borrowed.
⚠ Iowa City's FY2025 bars are unaudited (dashed outline), and pre-TAN. Peers use audited FY2025 figures; Iowa City has no FY2025 audit, so its cash & revenue come from the district's own internal report (PFM Exhibit 1) and its reserves can't be computed at all. The net-cash bars (all districts) are also gross of short-term borrowing — we don't yet have year-end tax-anticipation balances; subtracting them would shorten the cash bars, most for the borrowers (chiefly Iowa City).
Companion views: the district's own intuitive Day's Net Cash Ratio (days of cash, validated against ICCSD's dashboard) and the three-part “Does it have a cushion?” story. More under Other analyses.