Throughout the U.S., city governments make decisions under significant fiscal stress. This stress stems from the mismatch between declining municipal revenues and increasing demand for spending on critical city services including drinking water, education, transportation, fire protection, and housing. While decision making under fiscal stress is nearly ubiquitous, we know very little about the effects of financial stress on decision-making by city governments, the moderating effects of local political, institutional, and physical contexts, and the short- and long-term implications of these decisions. In this project we focus specifically on the ways that financial stress affects decisions about spending and rate setting (i.e., revenues) for municipal drinking water systems (DWS) and in turn, how these decisions impact DWS resilience. Financial stress has the potential to inhibit water managers’ ability to manage today’s challenges and plan for an uncertain future, and may expose tensions between addressing these challenges and maintaining affordable and equitable service delivery. Project findings will inform more effective and equitable public policy and interventions to reduce risks for municipal DWS today and in the future. We use both large, national datasets and qualitative case studies of individual cities to identify trends and relationships and deepen our understanding of causal mechanisms. The project has a three-part research design. We first combine existing national datasets (e.g., census, SDWIS, election data, form of government, city budgets, climate) with new data on drinking water rates then analyze these data to understand the relationship between financial stress in city governments and decisions about spending and drinking water rates. Second, we integrate these data with new data gathered from intensive internet searches and documentary analysis to advance knowledge of municipal fiscal resilience in the context of financial stress. Third, we use the results from the quantitative analysis of the integrated national data to identify eight cities for in- depth qualitative case study analysis to better understand the decisions cities make under financial stress, the role that institutional, political, and physical context plays in shaping these decisions, and how these decisions influence the resilience of DWS. Comparing cities and decision making in different political and institutional settings will strengthen understanding of how financial stress affects service delivery. The findings will advance fundamental understanding of how and under what conditions financial stress affects decision-making and resilience, and will provide actionable insights to support effective interventions to improve resilience and equity of resilience efforts. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 2048505. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.