On a Monday night in April, Mayor Daryl Justin Finizio announced that the city had just $400,000 in the bank and would not be able to pay its $1.7 million biweekly payroll at the end of the week.

"This is really it. I'm not here tonight to warn you that the sky is falling," Finizio told the City Council. "I'm here tonight to tell you that it fell. It fell last week."

Finizio asked that the state expedite payment of $11 million in educational cost-sharing funds to avoid defaulting on financial obligations. The state agreed, and the city met its payroll.

At Finizio's urging, the City Council passed a fund balance replacement plan, which included bonding $4.4 million to account for state grant funding the city has never collected and bonding $1.1 million to replace money the city took from the fund balance when projects ran over budget.

The City Council approved the bond package and, in November, voters affirmed the bond package.