Homer Is the Only Central New York Community on Both of the State’s Fiscal Stress Lists

When New York’s state comptroller published this year’s two fiscal stress report cards, one Central New York place turned up on both. The village of Homer, in Cortland County, scored 53.8 out of 100 on the state’s 2025 municipal fiscal stress list, released in March 2026. Homer Central School District, which covers the same community, scored 35.0 on a separate school district list released two months earlier, in January. Both landed in the mildest of the state’s three stress categories, “Susceptible to Fiscal Stress.” No other municipality and no other school district in Central New York appears on either list.

Both documents come from the Office of the State Comptroller’s Fiscal Stress Monitoring System, which Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli’s office runs every year to flag local governments and school districts that may be struggling to cover their bills.

Key Points

– Village of Homer: score 53.8, “Susceptible to Fiscal Stress,” the only Central New York municipality on the state’s 2025 list of seven.
– Homer Central School District: score 35.0, “Susceptible,” one of four Central New York districts on a separate 2025 list of 31 statewide.
– The two lists use different math. A score of 45 means “Moderate Stress” for a school district and only “Susceptible” for a village.
– Homer’s village government and its school district are separate elected bodies with separate budgets. The overlap is a coincidence of geography, not one shared problem.

Two lists, different clocks, different scope

The municipal list, “Municipalities in Stress, Fiscal Years Ending 2025,” is dated March 19, 2026, and reflects data as of February 27, 2026. It covers only local governments whose fiscal year does not run on the calendar year, which is why the statewide list is short: the comptroller’s office scored 518 villages and 17 non-calendar cities and designated seven of them in some level of stress, according to the March 2026 release announcing the results. Homer was one of the seven. So were Island Park in Nassau County (65.0, the state’s only “Significant Stress” designation this cycle), Liberty in Sullivan County (63.3), Alexander in Genesee County (58.3), Tivoli in Dutchess County (56.7) and Coxsackie in Greene County (55.0), all “Moderate Stress,” plus Huntington Bay in Suffolk County (49.2), “Susceptible” alongside Homer.

The school list works on its own separate timeline. “School Districts in Stress, Fiscal Years Ending 2025” is dated January 22, 2026, built from ST-3 financial reports covering the year that ended June 30, 2025, with data current as of December 31, 2025. It draws from a much bigger pool: the comptroller’s office scored 669 school districts statewide and designated 31 of them, or 4.6 percent, in some level of stress, per the January release. Four of those 31 are in Central New York: Fulton City School District in Oswego County (55.0, Moderate Stress), Marathon Central in Cortland County (45.0, Moderate Stress), Chittenango Central in Madison County (38.3, Susceptible) and Homer Central (35.0, Susceptible).

One notable absence from the school list: Syracuse’s city school district cannot appear on it at all. Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse and Yonkers run “fiscally dependent” school systems, meaning their finances are folded into their city government’s own books rather than scored on their own.

The same number can mean different things

Comparing a village score to a school score directly is where this gets confusing, because the two systems use different cutoffs. A municipality needs a score of 55 or higher to be labeled “Moderate Stress” and 65 or higher for “Significant Stress.” Anything from 45 up to 55 is “Susceptible.” A school district crosses into “Moderate Stress” at just 45, and into “Susceptible” territory at 25. Marathon Central’s 45.0 and Homer Village’s 53.8 sit on the same 100-point scale, but they describe different positions within two different systems built around different peer groups.

What the score actually measures

Both scores come from the same basic method, laid out in the comptroller’s “System Basics” guide. Financial data that local governments already file with the state gets measured against a set of indicators that add up to a 0-100 fiscal score. For villages like Homer, those indicators are year-end fund balance, operating surpluses or deficits, cash position, use of short-term cash-flow borrowing, and fixed costs. For school districts, it is the same list minus fixed costs.

A second, separate score, called the “environmental” score, has nothing to do with weather or pollution. It measures outside pressures a village or district cannot directly control: population change, unemployment, reliance on state and federal aid, or, for schools, the share of economically disadvantaged students, teacher turnover and the district’s budget vote approval rate. Fulton’s school district carries an environmental designation of “Susceptible” alongside its fiscal score. Homer Central does not carry any environmental designation on the state’s list, meaning its fiscal score stands alone, unconnected to those outside pressures.

On the ground in Homer

Homer Central’s own website shows some of what fiscal pressure looks like day to day. Voters approved the district’s 2026-2027 budget by a 983-277 margin in a May 2026 vote, alongside separate propositions covering bus purchases and library funding. The district’s website also says financial challenges led it to scale back its traditional PreK-6 summer learning program this year.

The village government’s site, villageofhomerny.gov, does not post a detailed public budget breakdown. It does show that the village board of trustees meets monthly, with minutes and video from past meetings posted online for residents who want to follow along.

Neither report tells a resident exactly what happens next, and a “Susceptible” designation is not a takeover or a state order. DiNapoli’s office frames both lists as an early warning rather than a verdict. “Officials must closely monitor their financial condition to be able to adjust to changes that may lie ahead,” the comptroller’s office said in releasing the municipal scores. On the school side, it put the responsibility on district budgets directly: “Officials should make every effort to ensure budgets are structurally balanced to avoid fiscal problems going forward.”