Sherman's main pool of invested operating cash shrank by about a fifth over the summer, according to a quarterly investment report the City Council is set to accept Monday.
The operating portfolio had a book value of about $49.3 million on Sept. 30, down $12.4 million from the end of June, Chief Financial Officer Mary Lawrence wrote in the staff summary. She attributed the drop to withdrawals from local government investment pools and to U.S. agency securities and Texas political subdivision bonds that matured during the quarter.
The money was spread across five types of securities. The average time to maturity lengthened to 445 days from 396 days the quarter before, and the portfolio earned 4.00%. That was 54 basis points under the yield on the one-year Treasury, the city's benchmark, which stood at 4.54%.
Bond money spent down
A second account holds borrowed money set aside for construction and other projects. It stood at $53.6 million at the end of September, $5.1 million less than in June, as the city drew on it to pay project bills. That account sits almost entirely in investment pools plus one U.S. agency security, with an average maturity of two days.
It yielded 3.75%, 27 basis points below its own benchmark, the four-week Treasury rate of 4.02%.
