Ridgeline Municipal Strategies, LLC is a municipal advisory and financial consulting firm helping California cities, water and wastewater agencies, and fire districts with financial planning and financing for infrastructure and facilities.
We are headquartered in Rocklin, CA, in the foothills of northern Sierra Nevada mountains.
Ridgeline was founded in 2020 by Dmitry Semenov with the vision of combining financial analysis with municipal financing.
It takes years to break ground on a project, and public agencies often loose the connection between the initial financing plan and its execution. A consultant runs the numbers. Later a municipal advisor does the financing. The two don’t talk. You end up with schedule delays, missed funding opportunities, loss of institutional knowledge, and higher costs.
Ridgeline set out to change that. We build financing models, help you figure out the funding (revenues, reserves, fees, grants, and bonds), and then work with you to put the funding in place.
Since the launch, we have helped dozens of public agencies make better financial decisions, get projects funded, and save millions of dollars on pension costs.
Dmitry Semenov
Founding Principal
Dmitry has been working in the public finance and community development field for close to 30 years. He has facilitated over 150 municipal financing transactions that raised close to $1 billion for cities, counties, water and wastewater agencies, fire departments, school districts, and other public agencies and non-profit organizations, and completed over 60 financing studies.
Dmitry advises cities, water and wastewater agencies, and fire departments on infrastructure and facilities financing, pension cost optimization, revenue generation, and fiscal strategies. Clients value his clear and easy-to-understand advice.
You can often find Dmitry speaking at industry conferences, including CDIAC’s Essentials of Debt Issuance, League of California Cities Municipal Finance Institute, California Special Districts Association, Fire Districts Association of California, California Fire Chiefs Association, and California Association of Sanitation Agencies.
Dmitry holds Series 50 (municipal advisor professional) and Series 54 (municipal advisor principal) licenses. He earned his MBA from the University of California, Davis, and holds a BS in economics from the Plekhanov University of Economics.
In his free time, Dmitry enjoys spending time with his family, traveling, backpacking, and reading.
The name Ridgeline is inspired by frequent backpacking trips to the California Sierra Nevada mountains. The mountain ridges were here long before we showed up and will still be here long after we are gone. This is the kind of strength and resilience that we strive to see the communities we serve.
We hold ourselves to the highest ethical standards, adhering to the duty of care and loyalty to our clients. As your fiduciary, we keep your best interests at the heart of our analysis and advice.
Striving for excellence, we thoroughly research, analyze, and provide clear guidance tailored to your unique needs. We think several steps ahead to anticipate issues before they come up.
Striving for excellence, we thoroughly research, analyze, and provide clear guidance tailored to your unique needs. We think several steps ahead to anticipate issues before they come up.
We help California’s cities, water and wastewater utilities, and fire departments get more funding through financial planning and municipal advisory services.
On the planning side, we prepare infrastructure and facility financing plans, fee and rate studies, and fiscal analysis that are firmly grounded in the realities of the municipal bond market.
On the financing side, we stand by our analysis and get projects funded, including grant applications support and municipal advisory for bond issuance, private placements, government loans, and equipment leases.
As unfunded pension liabilities take up more and more of California public agency funds, we help you make this problem less costly.
We are firmly committed to serving California cities, water and wastewater agencies, and fire departments, constantly looking for ways to improve and innovate the public finance industry. In financing, we strive to develop issuer-friendly credit structures, such as draw-down lines of credit and flexible prepayment terms, which can help our clients save money. In planning, we are developing software that helps agencies better manage their capital facilities and revenues. Stay tuned for exciting announcements coming soon!
