The city of Chester is facing a $45.7 million deficit in 2027. The receiver believes the city can overcome it

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If nothing changes with the cash-strapped city of Chester’s finances, state-appointed receiver Vijay Kapoor projected the bankrupt municipality faces a $45.7 million deficit as early as 2027.

The Office of the Receiver for the City of Chester on Tuesday called the figure, which could snowball over the next decade, “the number.” It’s the gap that Chester, at the moment, must close to exit municipal bankruptcy.

“It’s challenging, but I also think it’s doable,” Kapoor told WHYY News.

Tuesday’s announcement comes four years to the day after former state-appointed Receiver Michael Doweary filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy on behalf of the city in Delaware County. Kapoor, who previously was Doweary’s chief of staff, said the receiver’s team spent a majority of its time “stabilizing the operations” and hiring experts to secure the city’s finances.

“When we got here, the city government was not only broke, but it was also broken,” Kapoor said. “We were very close to running out of money to make payroll, and now the city has a $12 million fund balance. We were very close to having the police pension fund run out of money to pay checks, and now it’s got five years of assets in it.”

Kapoor said the past four years have given the receiver’s office the time needed to understand how the city functions at its most basic level. That enabled the receiver’s team to determine the actual deficit and how best to close it.

“This is not a conservative number,” Kapoor said. “This is not a liberal number. We’re not trying to use it based on bargaining purposes. This for us is really our good faith estimate of the projected deficit that we need to close in order to get out of bankruptcy.”