Current budget figure
$839.2M
FY2026
Promoted from linked city budget documents in GovMatrix storage.
City overview
Santa Ana
Budget, score drivers, procurement context, and source documents in one place.
Peer group: mid-size CA municipalitiesComparison quality: ReasonableModel: score_v2
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Budget per resident
$2,752
Based on the current budget figure
Top vendor share
22.4%
Share of tracked payments tied to the largest vendors
Jurisdiction score
70
/100
Stable
Confidence: High
Top-level judgment
Mostly stable, but a few spending or procurement patterns deserve follow-up.
GovMatrix compares Santa Ana against mid-size CA municipalities and compresses the displayed score when source confidence is lower.
Confidence adjustment
Raw model score: 69.9
3 machine-readable documents and 2 evidence-linked findings back this score.
Main reasons
Reserves are trending upward
Santa Ana shows an improving reserve direction versus recent years.
Vendor concentration is elevated
22.4% 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 12.4 points.
Source coverage is strong
3 documents are parsed and linked into the score context.
Financial Stability
68
/100
Santa Ana shows improving reserves, with the adopted budget changing -0.7% year over year.
Spending Efficiency
77
/100
Administrative overhead is 21.0%, and consulting spend is moving faster than staffing in the current model.
Transparency
87
/100
3 of 4 source documents are parsed cleanly enough to use directly in the dataset.
Vendor Risk
61
/100
The largest vendors account for 22.4% of tracked payments, and 1 no-bid contracts show up in the current records.
Trend / Anomaly
54
/100
Professional Services is the biggest growth area, up 18.4% from the prior year.
Public Burden
82
/100
The current adopted budget works out to about $2,751 per resident.
Provenance
Every conclusion should be traceable
Source coverage
4 documents
3 parsed, 1 OCR-only, 0 review-needed
Last updated 2026-03-16
Evidence links
2 findings
Findings stay tied to source documents or parsed budget lines.
3 machine-readable documents and 2 evidence-linked findings back this score.
Resident brief
What this budget says
Source-backed summary
Quick read
Mostly stable, but a few spending or procurement patterns deserve follow-up.
GovMatrix compares Santa Ana against mid-size CA municipalities and compresses the displayed score when source confidence is lower.
What stands out
Peer group: mid-size CA municipalities
Benchmarked against 6 nearest jurisdictions using population, geography, and source coverage.
Reserve trend: Improving
Reserve direction is used as the durability proxy in the current financial stability model.
Budget-to-actual variance: 6.1%
Higher variance can indicate planning drift or year-end pressure.
Composite scores
What needs follow-up
Why did consulting and outside services grow faster than staffing?
mediumThis gets at whether recurring work is being shifted into contracts rather than staffed operations.
What procurement process governed payments to Pacific Infrastructure Group?
mediumHigh 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?
mediumBudget-to-actual drift is where broad totals turn into specific management decisions.
Vendor and procurement pressure
Pacific Infrastructure Group accounts for the largest share of tracked payments.
Top vendor share: 22.4%
Pacific Infrastructure Group
79.0% of top-vendor tracked spend • 1 contracts
$1,284,500
Civic Advisory Partners
21.0% of top-vendor tracked spend • 1 contracts
$341,850
What deserves a closer look
Start with the questions, then review the signals behind them.
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 Pacific Infrastructure Group?
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.
City Manager: Transformation office milestone retainer
Finance: Internal control design workshop
Trend context
Professional Services increased 18.4%, while Capital Outlay moved -7.2%.
Budget allocation with context
Toggle between share of budget, per-resident impact, and year-over-year change.
Extracted mix
$0.0B
Tracked category total
Largest visible bucket
Infrastructure
79.0% of total
Infrastructure
$1,284,500
79.0% of total
Consulting
$341,850
21.0% of total
Key normalized metrics
Per-resident and coverage-aware framing matters more than raw totals.
Tracked spend per resident
$5
Coverage-adjusted lens
Budget growth
-0.7%
Year-over-year change in the latest comparable budget
Coverage confidence
High
3 parsed, 1 OCR-only, 0 review-needed
Peer view
Compare with similar states
Population and evidence depth shape this peer group so the comparison stays useful.
Irvine73/100
Status: Stable
Admin: 0.0%
Vendor: 15.1%
Budget: 40.4%
Anaheim62/100
Status: Watchlist
Admin: 41.2%
Vendor: 16.8%
Budget: 4.1%
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%