Petersburg is the only locality publicly identified with its score, which fell below the stress threshold for the past three years, reaching 4.48 in 2016, when its financial woes became public.

“Petersburg is a locality I would have wanted to look at, having seen these scores without knowing anything else,” Mavredes said.

But the Southside city is not alone. City A also scored below the threshold the past three years, dropping to 4.25 in 2016. “This is a city I will be doing follow-up,” the auditor said.

Mavredes also plans to contact at least three other localities. City B fell precipitously from a score just under 50 in 2014 to between 13 and 14 in each of the next two years. The auditor said her first question is whether the data used in the 2014 assessment are correct.

County A shows what the auditor called “consistently low scores” — from just under 6 in 2014, to 8.23 the next year, and 7.31 in 2016.

County B declined sharply from a score of 21 in 2014 to under 16 the next year and just over 11 in 2016.

“That seems to me to be a huge drop over a two-year period,” Jones said.