Adopted budget
$449.2M
FY2026
GovMatrix City Score
Newport Beach gets a plain-language judgment backed by traceable evidence.
The score is not a single opaque number. It rolls up fiscal stability, spending allocation, transparency, procurement risk, anomaly signals, and public burden into one citizen-friendly readout.
Peer group: small CA municipalitiesComparison quality: ReasonableModel: score_v2
WestminsterAnaheimIrvineNewport BeachLaguna NiguelPlacentiaSan ClementeAliso ViejoCypressSanta AnaSearch another city
Budget per resident
$5,254
Public-burden framing, not raw-dollar framing
Top vendor share
29.6%
Procurement concentration in tracked payments
Displayed score
66
/100
Watchlist
Confidence: High
Top-level judgment
Mixed fundamentals with enough outlier signals to justify active public scrutiny.
GovMatrix compares Newport Beach against small CA municipalities and compresses the displayed score when source confidence is lower.
Confidence adjustment
Raw model score: 65.8
3 machine-readable documents and 1 evidence-linked findings back this score.
Main reasons
Reserves are trending upward
Newport Beach shows an improving reserve direction versus recent years.
Vendor concentration is elevated
29.6% of tracked payments flow to the top vendor, which is above the peer median.
Consulting spend is rising faster than staffing
Outside services growth leads staffing by 13.1 points.
Source coverage is strong
3 documents are parsed and linked into the score context.
Financial Stability
70
/100
Improving reserves and 6.6% budget growth shape this pillar.
Spending Efficiency
66
/100
0.0% administrative overhead and consulting growth drive this score.
Transparency
87
/100
3/4 documents are parsed into the current dataset.
Vendor Risk
50
/100
29.6% top-vendor share and 1 no-bid contracts affect this pillar.
Trend / Anomaly
61
/100
Contracted Services is the biggest growth area at 16.1%.
Public Burden
57
/100
$5,254 per resident frames the current adopted budget.
AI explanation layer
Deterministic facts first, language second
In one sentence
Mixed fundamentals with enough outlier signals to justify active public scrutiny.
Benchmarked against 6 nearest jurisdictions using population, geography, and source coverage.
What stands out
Reserve trend: Improving
Reserve direction is used as the durability proxy in the current financial stability model.
Budget-to-actual variance: 5.5%
Higher variance can indicate planning drift or year-end pressure.
Top vendor share: 29.6%
Regional Utility Maintenance accounts for the largest share of tracked payments.
Questions residents should ask
Why did consulting and outside services grow faster than staffing?
This gets at whether recurring work is being shifted into contracts rather than staffed operations.
What procurement process governed payments to Regional Utility Maintenance?
High vendor concentration is not proof of a problem, but it does merit a sourcing explanation.
Which categories drove the biggest gap between plan and actual spending?
Budget-to-actual drift is where broad totals turn into specific management decisions.
Provenance
Every conclusion should be traceable
Source coverage
4 documents
3 parsed, 0 OCR-only, 1 review-needed
Last updated 2026-03-16
Evidence links
1 findings
Findings are tied to source documents and used to constrain explanations.
3 machine-readable documents and 1 evidence-linked findings back this score.
Budget allocation with context
Toggle between share of tracked spend, per-resident impact, and year-over-year change.
Utilities
$458,200
60.3% of total
Infrastructure
$301,900
39.7% of total
Key normalized metrics
Raw totals are less useful than resident-level and peer-relative framing.
Tracked spend per resident
$9
Sample-based operational lens
Budget growth
6.6%
Year-over-year change in adopted budget
Biggest swing
Contracted Services
Up 16.1% year over year
Vendor and procurement pressure
Concentration is a risk indicator, not an accusation.
Top vendor share: 29.6%
Regional Utility Maintenance
60.3% of top-vendor tracked spend • 1 contracts
$458,200
Tracked vendor signal
Pacific Infrastructure Group
39.7% of top-vendor tracked spend • 1 contracts
$301,900
Tracked vendor signal
What deserves a closer look
These are watch indicators surfaced from current payment, contract, and trend data.
Utilities: Emergency utility hardening work order
Trend context
Contracted Services increased 16.1%, while Fleet Replacement Timing moved -5.8%.
Comparison
Compare Newport Beach against similar cities
Benchmarking turns a score into a defensible story.
Strong comparison
Population size, geography, and source coverage make this a strong like-for-like comparison.
Newport Beach scores 0 points higher than Westminster primarily because it shows better source transparency, fewer anomaly signals, lighter public burden.
Newport Beach leads by 56 points on transparency.
Westminster leads by 28 points on trend / anomaly.
Westminster leads by 26 points on public burden.
GovMatrix score
Newport Beach: 66/100Westminster: 66/100
Administrative overhead
Newport Beach: 0.0%Westminster: 24.7%
Top vendor share
Newport Beach: 29.6%Westminster: 14.0%
Budget growth YoY
Newport Beach: 6.6%Westminster: 3.2%
Budget per resident
Newport Beach: $5,254Westminster: $1,471
Confidence
Newport Beach: HighWestminster: Limited
| Metric | Newport Beach | Westminster |
|---|---|---|
| GovMatrix score | 66/100 | 66/100 |
| Administrative overhead | 0.0% | 24.7% |
| Top vendor share | 29.6% | 14.0% |
| Budget growth YoY | 6.6% | 3.2% |
| Budget per resident | $5,254 | $1,471 |
| Confidence | High | Limited |
Newport Beach66/100
Status: Watchlist
Admin: 0.0%
Vendor: 29.6%
Budget: 6.6%
Westminster66/100
Status: Watchlist
Admin: 24.7%
Vendor: 14.0%
Budget: 3.2%
Laguna Niguel62/100
Status: Watchlist
Admin: 24.7%
Vendor: 25.2%
Budget: 6.8%
San Clemente66/100
Status: Watchlist
Admin: 16.0%
Vendor: 14.0%
Budget: 4.1%