Net bonded debt stood at $70,178,308 in FY2025, roughly quadrupled per person over a decade.
Fifteen years of the town's finances, drawn as direction rather than as any single year. Each chart resolves from the same ledger the rest of this record uses, and a year with no figure renders as a visible gap rather than a guessed line.
The trend
Where are the finances heading over fifteen years?
A fifteen-year read on the town's financial trajectory — chart set modeled on the Strong Towns Finance Decoder (pattern adopted, not their branding or spreadsheet). Every point below resolves from a verified fact with an ACFR page locator — which their worksheet does not carry. A year the ledger can't verify renders as a break, never an interpolated line. Each chart carries the same time axis (FY2011 → FY2025); the shaded band marks the two COVID-affected fiscal years (FY2020–FY2021, the pandemic's fiscal footprint), so every line can be read against it.
The window now runs FY2011–FY2025. FY2016–FY2025 comes from the FY2025 ACFR's own “Last Ten Years” statistical tables; FY2011–FY2015 was extended from each year's own CAFR (via an independently-run decoder whose extraction matched our ledger to the dollar where they overlap, and was spot-confirmed against the primary CAFRs) — every year carries its own locator. One finding from that reach-back is disclosed in cite mode on the bonded-debt facts: the city's own FY2021–FY2025 statistical tables carry a one-year misalignment in the bonded-debt history, corrected here to the contemporaneous audited reports.
In plain language: ask the simplest question — in a given year, did the town take in more than it spent, or less? You get two opposite answers, and both are true. By the city's official books (the amber line, the GAAP “change in net position”), Deer Park ran a surplus in every one of the fifteen years shown. By the money-it-can-actually-spend measure (the dark line — the same flow that moves the cushion in the very next chart below), it ran a deficit in eight of the fourteen years it can be computed. In FY2025 the two answers stood $55.6M apart: a $17,968,248FY2025 ACFR PDF p.119 / printed p.112 official surplus, and a −$37.6M spendable deficit in the same twelve months. The gap isn't an error — it's the buildings. A GAAP surplus counts a new gymnasium as this year's income; the spendable measure counts only cash and what the town owes. Same town, same year, opposite verdict — which is exactly why this page shows both, and why the cushion chart below, not the official surplus, is the one to watch. “Official” = dp.series.changenetpos (GAAP change in net position, total primary govt); “spendable” = year-over-year change in dp.series.netposition; FY2025 gap $17,968,248 − (−$37,587,412) = $55,555,660
In plain language: an earlier version of this chart looked reassuring — a positive, rising line. It measured the wrong thing. Measured as Strong Towns defines it — the money the city can actually spend, minus everything it owes — the position has been negative in thirteen of the fifteen years shown: it climbed briefly above zero in 2014–15, was consumed, and is now at its worst. We drew the comforting chart ourselves, caught it ourselves, and are publishing the correction dp.series.netposition rev 2 — correction on each year's fact; reports/m18_indicator_correction.md; window extended to FY2011 by M17 Phase 2 — because a page that corrects itself in public is the only kind you should trust.
But didn't the city just build $52M of assets? It did — and that is exactly why this chart counts only money. A building the city calls an asset can be a cost by the cash-flow test: the question is whether it earns or draws. Last year's +$52,390,447derived — ~$236.8M -> ~$289.1M of new capital splits honestly in two. About 17¢ of each dollar (+$8,917,188 (17% of the capital increase)printed p.51 / PDF p.57) went into the waterworks — and those earn their way: user fees cover their running costs and their wear, with +$2,272,749 (after depreciation)printed p.21 / PDF p.27 left over. The other 83¢ (+$43,473,259 (83% of the capital increase)printed p.49 / PDF p.55) went into civic buildings and streets — a community center ($41,977,542 authorized · $41,210,020 spent (98%, near complete)printed p.50 / PDF p.56), an activity center ($41,712,235 authorized · $20,716,426 spent (50%, mid-build)Note 3, commitments table (printed p.50 / PDF p.56)), a courthouse ($8,593,000 authorized · $541,285 spent (6%, starting)Note 3, commitments table (printed p.50 / PDF p.56)). Real, usable, community-serving — and, by the cash-flow test, commitments rather than income: you cannot pay a bond bill with a gymnasium, and from now on those buildings draw upkeep and wear from the same fund that pays for police and streets. And these buildings wear out — $7,700,822/yrNote 3, depreciation by function (printed p.50 / PDF p.56) of wear on the city's buildings and works today, rising as $92,137,180 still in progressprinted p.49 / PDF p.55 of construction still in progress comes online. More of the bill is still ahead: the activity center is only half built and the courthouse has barely begun. The buildings are why the line above fell; they are not what will bring it back. What a resident can do about it belongs to TAAL's register, not this page — here we only say what is true.
Technical: FY2025 net capital +$52,390,447derived — ~$236.8M -> ~$289.1M = governmental +$43,473,259 (83% of the capital increase)printed p.49 / PDF p.55 + water/sewer +$8,917,188 (17% of the capital increase)printed p.51 / PDF p.57 (Note 3 roll-forwards). Enterprise capital is self-supporting after its $3,255,002/yrNote 3, business-type depreciation (printed p.51 / PDF p.57) depreciation charge. General-government capital is service capital: courts and streets produce no offsetting revenue; recreation is stated precisely — program fees currently cover direct operating expense (+$83,412 (program revenue $2,030,409 - expense $1,946,997)Statement of Activities (printed p.21 / PDF p.27)) but not the structures now being built. Financed by GO/CO bonds plus the spend-down of financial assets — the mechanism of the FY2025 drop in this chart.
In plain language: same solvency question, but now counting everything the town owns — buildings, land, pipes, equipment — not just spendable money. By this measure Deer Park looks comfortably solvent: total assets run about twice its liabilities, every year. Hold this chart against the one above and the whole story is in two lines: counting the buildings, the town is 2-to-1 in the black; counting only the money it can spend, it’s under water. Both are true — which one matters depends on whether you can pay a bond bill with a gymnasium. characterizes dp.series.grossassets ÷ dp.series.totalliab: 2.16 (2011) → 1.88 (2021) → 1.99 (2024)
In plain language: the asset-condition question — how worn-out is the city's stuff, and is it getting worse? This is the depreciated (current) value of the town's buildings, roads and pipes over what they originally cost; higher means newer, lower means more used-up. The restrained, honest read: the stock is aging only modestly — for most of the fifteen years the ratio sat in a narrow band near half its original cost. The step up at the end, into FY2025, is not the town quietly renewing itself — it is the building spree landing: new capital enters the books at full cost before it has begun to depreciate, which lifts the ratio for now and will settle back as those assets age. Read from this side it is the same borrowing-financed program the debt and cushion charts show — not decay, but not a clean win either. characterizes dp.series.capnet ÷ dp.series.capcost: 0.51 (2011) → ~0.50 (2014) → 0.58 (2019) → 0.65 (2025); the end-step tracks the FY2023–2025 building completions and construction-in-progress carried at full cost
In plain language: for most of a decade the town paid its debt down — from just over half a year's revenue in 2011 to about an eighth by 2019. The building program reversed that in five years: bonded debt is back up to nearly three-quarters of a year's revenue, the highest levels in the fifteen years shown. Debt isn't automatically bad — but direction matters, and the direction flipped. characterizes the plotted series: 51.8% (2011) → 12.0% (2019) → 72.0% (2024) / 71.0% (2025)
In dollars, the level behind that ratio is $70,178,308printed p.121 / PDF p.129 of net bonded debt at the close of FY2025 — the figure the dashboard card carries. Divided across the town's people that is $2,075 (net debt $70.18M / 33,823)printed p.121 / PDF p.129, up from $493 (FY2016)†correctedFY2019 CAFR PDF p.155-156; identically FY2020 CAFR at the start of this window.
In plain language: interest is the rent on borrowed money — it buys no police shift, no street repair, no library hour. Around 2020 that rent cost the town about a penny of every revenue dollar; in 2024 it hit seven cents, and it runs four cents now. Every one of those cents comes out of the same fund that pays for services, before a single service is bought. characterizes the plotted series: ~1.05% (2020) → 7.2% (2024) → 4.0% (2025)
In plain language: grant money is real money and it pays for real things — this is not a complaint about grants. The point is who decides: these dollars are set in Austin and Washington, not in Deer Park, and they swing — from under a penny of every revenue dollar in some years to about twelve cents at the 2023–24 peak, eight cents now. The more of the budget that rides on money the town doesn't control, the more the town's plans depend on decisions made somewhere else. characterizes the plotted series: 0.9% (2011) / 1.0% (2015) → 12.5% (2023) → 7.9% (2025)
In plain language: two taxes carry the town, and COVID treated them differently. Property tax (dark line) never flinched — it climbed every single year, straight through the shaded COVID band, because assessed values and the rate are set a year ahead and don't move with the economy. Sales tax (amber line) is the opposite — it feels the economy in real time, and you can see it stall in the two COVID years before surging back. That is the test of the COVID read, and it holds: the pandemic barely dented Deer Park's sales tax — about a 2% dip, not a collapse — because this is an industrial town, not a retail one.
One thing the chart can't show: this is only the city's 1% general share. Deer Park stacks the Texas-maximum 2% local sales tax — the other penny flows to three voter-approved special districts (Community Development $5,190,905FY2025 ACFR PDF p.115 / printed p.108, Crime Control $2,588,831FY2025 ACFR PDF p.115 / printed p.108, Fire/EMS $2,580,330FY2025 ACFR PDF p.115 / printed p.108 in FY2025), another $10,360,066FY2025 ACFR PDF p.115 / printed p.108 that roughly doubles the town's real sales-tax take but is walled off for those specific purposes. The honest flag: the special districts did not rescue a failing base — the general 1% grew on its own — but they mean the town leans on sales tax about twice as hard as this line alone suggests, and that half is locked to crime, fire, and development, not general services. property: dp.series.proptax; sales (1% general): dp.series.salestax; district portions: dp.tax.salestax.* (FY2025 ACFR component units). COVID dip: sales $7,243,047 (2019) → $7,086,318 (2020) → $7,058,578 (2021)
The four charts are one story. The town bought buildings with borrowed money (bonded debt back near its fifteen-year high), pays rising rent on that borrowing (interest, a penny per revenue dollar to as much as seven), leaned further on money other governments decide (transfers — real dollars, decided elsewhere), and spent its own cushion doing it (net financial position at its worst). Deer Park built on borrowed room — and the room is gone. synthesis entailed by the four plotted series above; each clause cites its chart
Two readings stand out, and neither is reassuring. Net financial position — the city's liquid financial assets minus everything it owes, the Strong Towns solvency measure — has been negative in all but two of the fifteen years shown (a brief climb above zero in 2014–15, then consumed) and fell to its worst point, −$67.0M, in FY2025, as the bond program converted financial assets into buildings (current and other assets dropped about $33M in FY2025 while net capital assets rose about $52M). Bonded debt as a share of revenue more than doubled over the decade (the courthouse and community-center bonds); interest climbed from roughly 1% of revenue in FY2020 toward 4% by FY2025 (7% in FY2024); and grant dependence rose from near zero to about 8%. The financial cushion has been consumed: Deer Park is building real assets on borrowed room it no longer has.
- On the record: an earlier note here claimed the tool has “seven charts” with an unsourced seventh. That was wrong — the decoder is six indicators, and the correction is logged in the mission record, and corrected.
- Cross-validated. Every series was checked year-by-year against the completed decoder workbook; our ACFR-sourced figures tie out to the dollar (financial assets − liabilities reproduces the net-financial-position line exactly). Deltas reconciled in the mission record.